Heidi Kraak
Despite having a studio overlooking the rolling Thorpdale hills, landscape artist Graeme Myrteza says the colour green is “about the worst thing you could ever work with”.
“Green doesn’t work in painting,” he said.
“Nobody paints green paintings, they always paint them in the summertime when everything is dead.
“I like the more orange colours of the outback.”
Mr Myrteza enjoyed painting when he was younger but took “a 40-year break” and began painting again 10 years ago after his son lost his battle with muscular dystrophy. “It was my therapy I suppose. I’ve been painting ever since,” he said.
“I go away every year with a couple of mates on a painting trip for a week or 10 days. We do these little sketches on site. We do two or three everyday and come home and do bigger ones.
“I [just] came back from Simpson Desert, I go to the high country a lot.”
Mr Myrteza’s love of the Australian landscape is evident and he said he enjoys experimenting with perspective.
“Everybody has painted landscapes standing on the ground for the last 500 years so I’d like to get a drone and start taking pictures and painting them,” he said.
“I use these aerial sort of shots. I like things from a different perspective, more aerial, looking down on things a bit.
“I like to keep moving along and try to do something a bit different.”
Having farmed in Thorpdale “since forever”, Mr Myrteza is a self-taught artist and learnt by “just playing around”.
“A lot of people use acrylics but I don’t think anything could beat a good oil painting,” he said.
“I got a real light touch, so I can sort of do a painting, wet on wet, and not have to wait until it dries.
“Being a farmer, I think it’s got a lot to do with knowing where the light is and how the trees look. That must have something to do with it.”
Mr Myrteza said he has had more than 30 exhibitions in the region and in Melbourne.
“These days if I do a really good painting I don’t really care if I sell it or not,” he said.
“My two mates we go away and catch up and have beers every couple of months.
“We’re totally different and we feed off each other really well. It is quite interesting to see the three of us painting a landscape and you just get these three different landscapes. They’ve been painting all their lives.” Mr Myrteza’s work is on display at the Station Gallery in Yarragon throughout August.
For more information, visit facebook.com/BawBawArtsAlliance/?ref=br_rs.
