“Thicket Scrub, Townsville Common”, 2017

James Brown

“Thicket Scrub, Townsville Common”, 2017

Pastel and oil on canvas

Size: 40 x 50 cm

I've created numerous paintings of the environmental park at Townsville Common because, in contrast to manicured parklands, the Common offers a virtually untouched, raw, and “natural” landscape characterized by thickets of vines, charred stumps, and a generous scattering of fallen branches. For me, this rugged, broken terrain can best be described as monsoon thicket scrubland, as it transitions from a parched state to an explosion of vibrant growth around December, following the rainy season. In retrospect, this inherent changeability is a metaphor for my own mindset at the time of making the painting—a mind twisted with superficial anxieties, yet buoyed by an underlying sense of happiness arising from being in the park.

My approach to the painting began with a loose drawing using pastel and water to smudge and “find” the subject as an overview of what I was observing. The pastel layer provided breadth and colour without delving too deeply into specific details. Following this initial exploratory phase, I transitioned to oil paint, focusing on defining the more significant branches and emphasizing the vertical and horizontal elements of the trees. This approach helped to create stability within the composition.