Joe Furlonger: Horizons

21 Furlonger’s travels to South-East Asia and China also provide insights into how he organises his landscape compositions, making use of negative space and alluding to detail with calligraphic, rhythmic and decisive brushstrokes. Having long been intrigued by reclusive expatriate artist Ian Fairweather and his time in China in the 1930s, Furlonger holds Fairweather’s art in high regard. Indeed, similarities exist in each artist’s approach: an interest in travel, particularly in Asia; a restlessness in exploring differing styles and motifs; and a light layering technique used for building up an image. In the works of each, thin layers of muted pigments, overlayed with several calligraphic lines, capture the telling details of place. 16 If one considers Fairweather’s Pumicestone Passage 1957 (QAGOMA Collection) alongside Furlonger’s Study for Bribie Island Passage I and II 2010, for instance, their closely related layering technique, colour combinations, and loose, calligraphic representations of Queensland’s jagged Glass House Mountains are evident. Furlonger’s ceramic Moree landscape 1995 (QAGOMA Collection, thrown by Brisbane potter Errol Barnes) further demonstrates his empathy with the work of Fairweather in both its colour and strong sense of balanced form. In the history of Australian landscape painting, there has often been an idea of an Australian sublime in its depiction. Sidney Nolan’s vast, inhospitable panoramas of droughts, deserts and visual monotony created such a feeling, embodying a sense of awe and even dread. Furlonger has JOE FURLONGER: PLACE AND TIME