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Many of my best paintings are not available for this exhibition. However, many of these are available as quality giclee prints that can be purchased on my website WinsArt.com.
This print is of " The Old Order Changeth"
The scene depicted is Cobbold Creek, where the valley opens out after the restrictive narrow gorge. I sketched this the first time I saw it, but the tree was standing then and the composition wasn't quite right. Ten years later, when I revisted the Gorge, the tree had fallen. I realized the subject was now perfect.
All the time I was painting this, a line of poetry kept ringing in my head, but I could not place the poem. Later I discovered the quoatation. It comes from King Arthur's last speech to Sir Bedivere, after his final defeat, in Tennyson's poem "The Death of Arthur"
Several viewers have remarked that this painting expresses changing times. So I shall give the full quotation.
"The old order changeth, giving way to new.
And God fullfills himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world"
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There are no kangaroos in Austria. We're talking about Australia, the world's smallest continent. That being cleared up, let's dive right in! Australia is a sovereign state under the Commonwealth of Nations, which is in turn overseen by Queen Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God, Queen of Australia and Her other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth. The continent was first sighted and charted by the Dutch in 1606. Captain James Cook of Britain came along in the next century to claim it for Britain and name it "New South Wales." Shortly thereafter it was declared to be a penal colony full of nothing but criminals and convicts, giving it the crap reputation you may have heard at your last cocktail party. This rumor ignores 40,000 years of pre-European human history, especially the Aboriginal concept of Dreamtime, an interesting explanation of physical and spiritual reality. The two biggest cities in Australia are Sydney and Melbourne. Sydney is more for business, Melbourne for arts. But that's painting in very broad strokes. Take a whirl around the panoramas to see for yourself! Text by Steve Smith.
