Dane Lovett Garden in a parking lot

Garden in a parking lot was inspired by a recently established patch of green in inner Melbourne, near Dane Lovett’s home. It was made after visiting a friend’s new garden, wedged between a carpark and a warehouse, says the artist, a first-time Wynne finalist.

‘The area was once marshland, then farmland and now an inner-city suburb. The garden itself has also been designed to change throughout the seasons. I chose to paint a small section from above in an all-encompassing scale, which is often how I view the environment on my walk to and from my studio. It can look both familiar and terrifying.’

The painting belongs to a series of works in which Lovett extracts details from nature, often from the ground, then renders them at an immense size. Using tonal washes of near monochromatic colour, he confuses distinctions between positive and negative space, drawing us into a plant world that is ambiguous, almost alien.