Gregory Hodge Pattern in a landscape

Gregory Hodge’s landscapes are an amalgam of the different places he spends time in. In this work, he has merged impressions of forests around Paris, France, with those of coastal bush on the NSW South Coast.

Referencing his photographs, collages and drawings, Hodge built the image using a controlled language of painterly marks that creates a pattern-like effect. Hints of spatial depth are collapsed by the flatness of the intricate surface, something that reflects his interest in translating the physical properties of textile into painting.

‘I have been looking specifically at 17th- and 18th-century tapestries that depict northern European landscapes,’ says Hodge, a two-time Sulman finalist and first-time finalist in the Wynne.

‘By layering dragged painted marks, I try to emulate a woven surface, giving the illusion that the image is embedded within texture. These all-over horizontal and vertical striations of paint become reminiscent of the texture of a tapestry.’