Joe Furlonger: Horizons

33 the edge of the tectonic plate pushing up out of the earth. As ever, it’s the structure underpinning the landscape he is interested in. ‘These chilly mists get in those gaps and dry them out, and they lose about 50 per cent of their fat,’ he reckoned. ‘All the leaves drop, and the life drains away. From this distance, we can see how the light now gets further into them and we can make out all their bones.’ As with so much of Furlonger’s range, colour suggests sensorial, olfactory and luminous qualities. In other works, with Phthalo or true cerulean blues, greens and Arylide yellow, colour performs a contortionist role, seamlessly conflating horizon line, middle ground and foreground to condense the panorama via sweeping gestural swathes. For many years, Joe Furlonger has watched this country and its chaotic shifts. He has also seen his perceptions shift with it. In the ‘Balonne’ works, in particular, Furlonger found another way to approach an enduring subject and render landscape intimately, from its bones out. ‘I’m just grappling with vastness and how we’re actually quite insignificant . . . just dots on the landscape no matter who we are,’ he told me. I mean, you’re out there and it looks orderly, gridded, fenced, but it’s really just barely all under control. The figure is different in cities, but the outcome is roughly the same. Figures bustle and jostle against each other and we try to relate our environment more to the human scale. I think we lose sight of the bigger forces at play. Both here and there, the figure performs a very minor role. It’s a cameo appearance and we do our best to look like we’re running the show. ENDNOTES This is an edited excerpt of an essay originally published in Artist Profile , no.20, 2012, pp.64–70. Reproduced here with kind permission. All quotes from Joe Furlonger were recorded during his field trip across south-east Queensland with the author and Evan Hughes, 2011. POURED FROM THE BRUSH