Image: Tree study 4 2025 Oil, acrylic and pencil on linen, 190 x 148cm

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Brett [McMahon] has one of the most original, powerful and variegated bodies of work in Australian art. Whatever the medium, he is always attempting to find poetic equivalents – in material, form and process – for the environment which surrounds him. His most recent paintings are marvels of unpremeditated responsiveness – attempts to commune with what Brett calls “a small pocket of rainforest, dense with lianas, tall gums, cabbage palms and strangler figs.” With oil paints, coloured pencils, oil sticks and scrapers, he uses human processes to evoke natural ones. Observe the way a flurry of olive green marks applied with a dry brush or oil stick sits roughly against the white ground. It evokes a spurt of leaves, but it does so almost arbitrarily – certainly before the word “leaf” or anything the mind has been taught to recognise as such has had time to form in the brain.

Sebastian Smee,
January, 2025