Glen Helen Gorge from the South Looking North 1955

Albert Namatjira made this watercolour painting of Glen Helen Gorge, and I can imagine him carefully layering thin washes of color to capture the light on those rocks. Look at how he’s built up the red-browns of the gorge with such delicate strokes! You can almost feel the heat radiating off the surface. I bet he was out there on site, feeling the sun, squinting his eyes, trying to find the right balance of hues to nail the colors of the Australian outback. The way he contrasts the warm tones with the cool blues of the sky and distant mountains—it’s like he’s trying to hold onto the feeling of being in that vast space. It’s interesting to see how he's rendering this landscape, echoing but also diverging from traditional European landscape painting. It reminds me of the way Agnes Martin used a limited palette to evoke expansive spaces. Namatjira is showing us a way of seeing, and that’s what painting is all about - an ongoing conversation across time.