Geoff

Landscapes after Turner

As a young child Geoff Dyer lived a few years on Bracken Lane in Fern Tree. He lived a substantial portion of his creative life in Hobart. In Hobart's northern suburbs, "What's grandma doing today?" was the familiar question in the Dyer household. Everyone looked out the window at the mountain. Clouded in, she had her woollies on. Bare and stark against a summer blue sky, it was a sign of a hot day. (Quoted by Andrew Darby) While the 19th century extolled the mountain with snow in its lily-white, feminine purity, Dyer, living in the age of climate emergency, painted it on fire. And he painted it Big. His 2010 series has the largest canvases. Dyer entitled one lurid canvas of pinky-red and black ‘Homage to Glover’ and another swirlingly greenish pastiche ‘Mt Wellington (after Turner)’. In A Tasmanian Perspective: The Art of Geoff Dyer, of its seven sections, the first chapter—and the only specific place collection—is entitled “Mt Wellington”.