In Praise of Landscape - Tapa dura

This magnificent book, authored by Lucy Ellem, outlines the life and career of a major proponent of the art of watercolour. John Borrack is a significant Australian landscape artist who has travelled the country recording its extraordinary land forms. The more than 270 pages are fully colour illustrated with hundreds of reproductions.John Borrack, born in 1933 and a renowned Australian landscape painter whose career spans more than 50 years, continues to paint full-time in his studio north of Melbourne where the once rural landscape of the Plenty Valley is being overtaken by suburban development.His landscapes, mainly executed in water colour and lavishly reproduced in this book record the beauty of this region and then extend to many remote areas of the continent - particularly in the north - where extraordinary land formations range from the ‘picturesque' to the ‘sublime'. He says, "lonely corners of Australia inspire an overwhelming sensation of space and distance. These places to which I am constantly drawn provide me with both a spiritual experience and the starting points for paintings."Author, Lucy Ellem, an art historian who studied at The University of Melbourne before undertaking post-graduate research at Yale and then lecturing at La Trobe University, provides an eloquent account of the artist's career, connecting his paintings with the longer tradition of landscape painting - and in particular, in watercolours.

Author, Lucy Ellem, an art historian who studied at The University of Melbourne before undertaking post-graduate research at Yale and then lecturing at La Trobe University, provides an eloquent account of the artist s career, connecting his paintings with the longer tradition of landscape painting and in particular, in watercolours.