Robert Fisher

THE  PAINTER-MAN  OF   WILLIAM  CREEK, OUTBACK   SOUTH  AUSTRALIA

As ‘the Painter Man of William Creek’, Robert Fisher is both recognised and celebrated there, in Outback style, -one of his paintings is displayed on the ceiling of the bar in the William Creek Hotel.

Over a hundred years ago this Pub was a provendoring stop-over for the Afghan working teams which, with their camels and the inherent capacity of both to cope with the harsh environment, were imported to South Australia to construct the Adelaide to Alice Springs rail-link, ever since known as “the Ghan”.

Fisher’s studio is at Trevor Wright’s place, and “Wrightsair” is the William Creek based tourist operation which, during the last five years, has flown this adventurous modern artist on his wide-ranging and movie-recording search over these most ancient Australian outback lands, for subjects to feature in his paintings.

Over the millennia, Nature’s elemental energies have stormed, worn, torn and crumpled the crust of our aged planet, and Australia’s centre exposes this world’s oldest land mass.

The hugely dynamic sweep and swirl of mountain ranges, the stretched flat plains between, and the snake-like convolutions of the rivers, have been traversed and recorded by Robert Fisher during all seasons, in ‘the Dry’ and in ‘the Wet’.

This deeply weathered land-face inspires Robert’s powerful paintings, but their poetic imagery also reveals the artists particular personal and passionate response to the sense of space and richness of place in this environmentally heroic outback.

Such works have included the mystical Ayer’s Rock (Uluru), the tumbled Olgas (Kata Tjuta) and the vast salt-surfaced spread of Lake Eyre.

Australians respect the land-forming legends of our Aboriginal peoples and their Ancestral Beings, as told in the lore and laws of Tjukurpa, the Aboriginal mythology.

And it is intriguing, and perhaps significant, that Fisher’s evocative and sensitive works suggest an aesthetic response to the shaping forces of Nature and to sense of place, clearly sympathetic with that which finds spiritual association and expression in the Aboriginal legends.

 In his “Lightning Strike” series Fisher shows a remarkable facility for depicting the mood and majesty of sky-scapes, and for capturing the sudden electrical illumination of the land in a powerful storm.

After a lightning-lit, thundering outback deluge, the next night’s moon can loom brilliantly large in the clear blue-black space about it, and Fisher’s spatially surrealist “Lunar Landscapes” are among his most compelling works.

A remarkable feature of the southern outback and a particular focus of interest for Robert Fisher is Lake Eyre.

The Lake is an enormous central sink to which eventually drain the far north-eastern rivers, swollen and bank-bursting from the annual “Big Wet”.  Thus briefly watered, at times to three quarters full, the lake soon dries to a vast salt-surfaced sun-reflecting blaze of white.

During October last, Fisher flew Lake Eyre by day and by night, storing impressions to depict in works expressly for the New York show, consequently producing vibrant depictions of the salt lake and its spatial skyscapes, of a sudden violent rain storm, and of moon-silvered nightscapes.

Few painters attempt such nocturnes, but the moon has a magical presence in Fisher’s repertoire, and most recently he has dramatically captured Australia’s historic 2002 outback Solar Eclipse.

In a series of sparse, darkly elegant portrayals, Fisher shows that for fleeting seconds the moon is a purple-black disc, suspended between sun and dim-lit Earth, the Sun’s violent fires seen as a flashing halo about the moon-disk’s edge.

Robert Fisher paints his individual Australian story in a very personal way, he shows that he is deeply moved by Nature’s many outback moods, and that he responds to the seasonal symphonies of light, colour and sound, he says “I want my work to show how much I see and how strongly in tune I feel with this ancient and astounding land.”

Don Hendry Fulton L.F.R.A.I.A.*

*Fulton is an Australian architect who has planned outback Australian mining townships; he has a master’s Degree in Architecture from the University of California at Berkeley USA, and is a member of Lambda Alpha International.

Robert Fisher paints Australian landscapes in a very personal way. The outback, particularly Central Australia, inspires powerful paintings, their poetic imagery revealing his passionate response to the sense of space and richness of place.

His works included Uluru, the Olgas and Lake Eyre, Fisher flying over the great salt lake by day and by night, researching impressions to depict in works for a 2003 New York show. The paintings were vibrant depictions of the lake, violent rain storms, and moon-lit nightscapes.

But his masterwork so far is the series As The Crow Flies, recently on display in London. He flew around areas including Broken Hill, Mount Isa, Leigh Creek and Birdsville to magically capture the “many moods of the outback.”

Despite the bush fascination, Robert Fisher was born and raised in the northern Melbourne working class suburb of Reservoir. But a trip as a 16-year-old on the Ghan changed all that when floods stopped the train at William Creek. The memories remained, and as his painting career unfolded he vowed to return and capture them.

As well as a studio in Melbourne, he also has one in William Creek, in the building of Wrightsair, the aircraft and tourist operation run by local identity Trevor Wright, and which, during the last eight years, has flown Fisher across the outback for his research.

A Fisher painting is displayed on the ceiling of the local pub and he is known as “the Painter Man of William Creek”.

He has also painted the You Yangs and a remarkable series, Walls and Footpaths of Melbourne.

“I think I painted around 26 canvases in Walls and Footpaths alone,” Robert says. “I can paint in a frenzy sometimes, in a trance-like state.”