Morning Songs

In Morning Songs, Julianne Ross Allcorn turns again to the Australian bush, not as backdrop but as a living, polyphonic subject. Banksias, gymea lily and stands of eucalyptus are threaded with birds, insects and small foraging creatures; everything seems to arrive at once, as it does on a clear morning.

Working in watercolour and pencil on birch wood, Ross Allcorn builds her scenes from the close looking she does outdoors — the notations, field drawings and colour tests that fill her journals. Thin, translucent passages of paint sit over the grain, while areas of birchwood are left visible, like clearings in the foliage.

Perspective in these paintings is gently unsettled: branches advance and recede on the same plane, birds perch and hover within one field of view. “There’s perspective in my drawing, but there’s no perspective at the same time,” Ross Allcorn notes. “I want the viewer to go on a journey with me — to look at everything at once, then close their eyes and listen for what they saw.” The invitation is to experience the work as you would a place: through accumulation.

What follows is a series of images keyed to morning — to first light on gymea lily, to the quick, bright presence of bees, to the alert posture of a lyrebird. Each painting is composed with extraordinary particularity, yet none of them feels static. They read, instead, like scored moments in a landscape that is continually in motion.

Ross Allcorn has been a finalist in the Archibald Prize (2021) and the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2020, 2021, 2022), receiving the Trustees’ Watercolour Prize in 2020. Her works have featured in numerous national prizes, including the Gallipoli Art Prize, Georges River Art Prize, Gosford Art Prize, Pro Hart Outback Art Prize, and the Federation Art Prize. In 2024 she was awarded the PLC Signature Art Prize and exhibited internationally in Milan as part of the AWI Fabriano Paper Watercolour Exhibition.