SITTING on the banks of the Murray River watching the Speewa Ferry go back and forth is where you would have found artist Mark Dober over the past few days.
Preparing for his exhibition ‘On The Land’ at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery later this year, Dober has been completing a two-week residency at Speewa to create his watercolour, wall-sized artworks.
“I am actually fitting more into a work than what you can see at any one moment, which makes it a bit different to how we see things,” Dober told The Guardian.
“It is also different to photography because the work is painted over several days and the weather changes and the light changes depending on if it is morning or afternoon, so the painting ends up being a record of an experience over days.”
Based in Castlemaine, Dober said artist residencies, which gives artists the opportunity to work on projects and develop new ideas in a different environment outside of their own studios, is something he does a fair bit.
“I do quite a few residencies that are usually organised by regional galleries so that I can make the work to show in their gallery, make work that relates to their landscape of their environment,” Dober said.
“That’s what they want to show, they want to show subjects that relate to their own regional landscape.”
Dober is set to have four 168x380cm paintings showcased at the Swan Hill Regional Art Gallery later this year, all depicting different landscapes around the Swan Hill and Speewa area, painting observationally within the landscapes he is recreating on paper.
“The thing is for some reason I love landscape and I always have – I’ve always sort of looked at it and taken an interest in it, more than just a tourist interest or a scenic interest,” Dober said.
“This [artwork] is more nature, but the other three works are more agricultural, they have got more of a landscape that you would generally see around the farms.”
To find out more about Mark Dober and his works, you can visit his website www.markdober.com
