Parliament House, Canberra

Description

Around 2019, my friend and mentor, Anil Puri, took a photo of Parliament House in Canberra and posted it on social media. It stunned me – the way the light was hitting it, the blue sky, the scarcity of people (very rare for that forecourt – Parliament must have been in recess!). I also found it interesting to look at it from someone else’s perspective – it was different to how I recalled it from my own visits. Needless to say, I had to try and capture it. I started … and then it took me the next 5 years to actually finish the job!

‘Parliament House, Canberra’ is one of my credit and sim card paintings. (You know the drill – no brushes were harmed in the making. ?) It also has the addition of painter’s sand in the foreground underlay. I figured the walls are so smooth and white, the sky so gentle, it needed some ‘oomph’ in the form of texture to ground it, so this is no ‘flat’ painting.

It’s also not an exact replica of Anil’s photo – there’s a little artistic licence in there, most notably the plane taking off and some of the people wandering the forecourt.

Parliament House in Canberra is an iconic building – high on the hillside but low-lying; a walled enclosure with views across the city to the War Memorial; a human-made structure with nature circling it.

Old Parliament House is a lovely building, but ‘new’ Parliament House is an architectural masterpiece – I love it!

Height: 40 cms; Width: 80 cms; Depth: 4 cms