La Prima Luce – The First Light

For his Michael Reid debut, Evan Shiphard has turned his attention to the bucolic Southern Highlands — to the Wingecarribee River at first light, to mist-laden paddocks, to stands of trees rising through morning fog.

Shipard’s practice sits in clear dialogue with the lineage of Australian Impressionism, particularly the work of Arthur Streeton and his circle. Like Streeton, Tom Roberts and Louis Abrahams (to name but a few), Shipard works through sustained engagement with place, returning repeatedly to the same sites to observe the shifting effects of light, season and atmosphere. Coming from a background in the film industry — where defining the establishing shot was often his role — the landscape presents a natural progression. The impulse is cinematic, but the resolution is painterly.

The familiar shimmering palette of the Australian landscape recurs throughout these works, as does an emphasis on space and distance: rivers winding, trees acting as vertical anchors, and the land opening gradually into air and light. Shipard’s brushwork is active and responsive — at times stippled and broken, at others broader and more assured — while skies are animated through layered, mannered passages of cloud and morning fog. These qualities recall Streeton’s own delight in the physical act of painting outdoors.

“The Highlands never ceases to inspire- the seasons change with such splendour and there is always an evocative quality to the place especially in the early morning light or the fading of golden hour into dusk. It whispers timeless melodies from the winding Wingeecaribee to the remote trails, waterfalls and wetlands.”