LB 23 SJB 19 Waterloo Street, is the twenty-third title from LONG BOOKS COLLECTION.

Considering the dimensions of the living space, the Architect thought about the fact that it would allow the taking of only three or four steps back from the living room wall.

The idea of taking three steps back recalled the Architect’s experience of viewing paintings by one of Australia’s masterful contemporary landscape painters, the late Nicholas Harding. In particular, the breathtaking, enormous oil painting Wilpena Wattle and Eucalypts 2019-2020 played on his mind.

It was a work that seemed to emanate the hot, arid air of the South Australian region in which it was painted, home to the Adnyamathanha people and known to them as Ikara. From a few steps back, the crackle of dry leaves and twigs, the rustle of creatures, the clear calls of small Australian parrots seemed palpable and audible. Up close, though, the thick swipes of paint shed context in a freefall into gorgeous, sumptuous materiality, a juxtaposition of colours that was intoxicating and seductive.

There are no paintings of the Australian bush (as densely scrubby, forested wild areas are called in Australia) that induce, in the viewer, such a strong sense of being in the bush as those of Nicholas Harding. One feels that one could scramble forward, over fallen trees and branches, turn around and struggle the other way, or rest on a rock, outstretched fingers breaking the spray of a small, cold waterfall. (…)