The Intensity of Light

Abstract

Program Note:

The Intensity of Light was commissioned by Gabriella Smart for her Research Project, Of Broken Trees and Elephant Ivories: curating and performing sixteen piano works inspired by the legacy of pianos in colonial Australia.

Throughout my childhood in the mid-north of South Australia, reproductions of Hans Heysen’s paintings were popular, and common in old farm houses. The scenes depicted in Heysen’s work are scenes that I can directly relate to through my own experiences, and I feel a particular connection to the way that Heysen depicts light within his work; which of course he was most famous for.

The Intensity of Light aims to capture a sense of the unique beauty, and light of the South Australian landscape, particularly in the mid-north and Flinders Ranges. The work was influenced by an archival recording of an interview with Hans Heysen from 1960, where he describes his approach and work. Despite being almost 60 years ago, many of his statements are quite prophetic; the most poignant for me being “our blue skies are being forgotten”. Vivid skies, sunsets like fire, deep purple evenings in the heat of summer, and rich blacks of the night punctuated by the milky way are re-imagined through the work, coalescing with a sense of the colonial within the landscape and lament for the loss of appreciation of simple pleasures in the pace of modern life.