Joe Furlonger

Inland Mariner

11 May - 6 June 2018

Opening: Saturday 12 May (2-5pm)

Several years ago, while traveling through north-west NSW, Joe Furlonger had a chance encounter with an old sailor, a man who had spent almost 50 years working on the sea. Perplexed by this contradiction – a sea dog in the sticks, Joe asked “What on earth are you doing out here?”. To which the sailor replied, “it’s just the same in here as it is out there”. Over the following weeks, Furlonger found that the sailor’s tale rang true.

 “I remember seeing the wheat fields covered in morning frost, and the way they swirled and eddied in the wind, you could have sworn you were on a boat looking out to sea”

Joe Furlonger: Inland Mariner is an exhibition of 9 paintings of land and sea and along with 4 portraits of the ‘Inland Mariner’.

Furlonger’s paintings are the result of a direct relationship with the landscape and harbours of Northern NSW and Southern QLD.  Using hand-made acrylic paints and reused canvases, Furlonger’s paintings yaw abstraction and figuration. The big flat spaces of the semi-arid regions of rural NSW and the shipping lanes of the Capricorn coast.