Floodwaters bring with them devastation, but also rejuvenation. In their aftermath we are left with the trying process of assessing what is worth rebuilding, restoring and remembering. Site Paintings by Thomas Thorby-Lister is an exercise in forfeited agency in order to access more truthful approaches to the depictions of landscape.

The weight of water in Thorby-Lister’s paintings does not simply arise as the result skilled brushwork–but from a direct relationship to the locations he occupies. Freshly ironed linen is first carried to various sites where they are laid on upon the ground and the artist relinquishes responsibility to nature. Rains and rivers shape the raw canvas before being brought to the studio for a painterly treatment largely kept untold by the artist. The surface tension of the once-wet fibres is palpable. You could even be forgiven for thinking these paintings are simply stretched loose and left to billow, but the surface could hardly be smoother. The verisimilitude achieved forces our perspective to shift through and off the gallery wall, as if there were still fresh earth underneath the surface.

Thorby-Lister’s sentimental eye relies heavily on specific locations and the lessons they impart, but this selective process and commitment to detail affords the work an equally powerful universality. To the viewer, a painting produced in Cowra from melted frost could just as easily remind one of a rained-out backyard from childhood or the mud cracks along a recent bushwalk. Replicated creases turn into vast topographical landscapes of the imagination.

Despite the depth of technical involvement, there exists a dramatic sense of economy, with the artist resisting any urge to embellish. In this way he is in the process of un-painting. He borrows from light and shadow settling on his canvases with little to no intention of revealing what lies beneath. This element of withholding is expressly deliberate, and the result is an absence that gives rise to a near-tangible substance.

Throughout Site Paintings we feel the pull of the damp earth, the empty space between dry rocks and riverbeds. Thorby-Lister’s gentle brushwork and desaturated palette aims to faithfully reproduce these traces and cement them in time, trusting the natural forces of each place to dictate his hand.