William Mackinnon Adventure and folly (ii)

In 2019, I made a large triptych about the Australian explorers Burke and Wills. This opened up a new territory for me. Adventure and folly (ii) references time spent in the powerful Kimberley region, but it is an invented landscape. For me, landscape painting is more about what is going on inside me.

Adventure and folly (ii) follows Australia’s ever-hotter summers and increasingly frequent, devastating fires. However, the black represents any unforeseen negative force, be it COVID-19 or any event that devastates one’s personal landscape. In 1983, when I was five, our family house burnt down in the Ash Wednesday bushfires, just two weeks after we moved in. Importantly, fire creates regeneration and opportunities for growth and change.

William Mackinnon, 2021