Outback Twilight: Windmill and Sorghum Field, Queensland

In this piece, I contrasted the sharp, vibrant greens of a growing sorghum crop against the dark silhouettes of an outback windmill and water tank.  Rather than relying on black, I used deep blue tones to capture the shadows, set against a colorful, restless twilight sky.  If you look closely near the top right, a distant flock of crows catches the last light of the Australian landscape. 

Acrylic painting of Winton plains from escarpment viewpoint, North Queensland.

To travel out in North West Queensland is to be amazed at a panorama of desert, dust and incredible views from clifftop places.  When I went out to see the dinosaur footprints, we stopped at a lookout. 

This was the inspiration for my painting, which features a stockman, his horse and faithful dog, standing on the cliff, with a spectacular view to the horizon. Truly, Australia is the land of wide open spaces.  The artwork was completed on board, with a thin wash technique to portray the arid outback landscape.  

 In this outback painting, I used a limited palette of browns and muted greens plus black to convey the harsh desert terrain. The scene is derived from the countryside near Winton, North Queensland.  A lonely station hand rests in the shade on a hill overlooking a tree dotted plain.  His horse and dog sit nearby.  The painting is my attempt to capture the vast panoramic expanses that comprise inland Australia. They have a unique beauty of their own.