A magical feeling for the spirit of place combines with a grand vision of the ocean and adjacent landscape in this large scale, light-filled work. Here the artist, as expressed in his own words, invites the viewer ‘…to live in the vision itself.’ The Robinsons purchased a retreat near Byron Bay in 2005 and the paintings from this area are both rare and among the artist’s finest.
The beautifully detailed foreground foliage in the present picture demonstrates aptly William Robinson’s exceptional skills as a colourist, and in the rendering of the ocean his ability to capture extraordinary effects with clarity of light.
Of his solo exhibition at the Ray Hughes Gallery in 1994, critic John MacDonald stated ’Robinson is the only non-Aboriginal artist since Fred Williams and John Olsen to give… an entirely new view on the Australian landscape’.
William Robinson is represented widely in public collections, including the National Gallery of Australia; Australian university collections; Parliament House, Canberra; many Australian regional galleries; Artbank; Museum of Brisbane and State Library Queensland; all Australian mainland state collections; and internationally in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Vatican Museum, Vatican City; the Auckland Art Gallery and Waikato Art Museum, Hamilton in New Zealand.
