Postcards from Home

Art Statement – Postcards from home

It’s a truism that one of the best things about travel is coming home.  The joys of travel go hand in hand with the pangs of homesickness, and this longing can be as much for a past memory of home as the present reality of it.

Postcards from Home tries to capture a sense of this, drawing on my memories of locations that are distinctively Brisbane 

The Story Bridge is as much sculpture as structure, and evocative of a different, more modernist time.

Richard Tipping’s ‘Flood’ sculpture conjures memories of visits to my nonni in New Farm and everything that went with that – the rose gardens and Moreton Bay figs, the heat and the Powerhouse looking out across the river.

The Centenary pool was a childhood haunt and is so beautiful I had to paint it from different angles, and in juxtaposition with similarly stylish and stylised figures borrowed from fashion graphics.

I hope Postcards makes you feel a little homesick too.

Vale James Birrell, architect of the Centenary Pool, Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, Australia

See more of my work at my website and at Lethbridge Gallery