My practice broadly revolves around exploring points of shifting light, the dynamic nature of time and how these moments of transition can speak to the psychology of landscape. I look to reduce the landscape to its simplest forms to suggest more intangible, reflective moments within the natural environment aiming to create spaces for contemplation and stillness.
I continually remain interested in how memory can reconstruct an image of the landscape, which is in turn imbued with an emotional or psychological connection to the place. In this, my paintings don’t particularly rely on the reality of a scene, but become composite images that contain different times, places and experiences, all at once.
In an increasingly loud world, I, as a painter want to use the inherent qualities of the landscape to provide some kind of counterbalance to the growing proliferation of visual imagery we get bombarded with on a daily basis. I believe in painting and paintings continued ability to be transformative in a transforming world.
Artist Statement - Joshua Andree
In Joshua Andree’s studio behind his carport in Hobart, time is the medium – stretched onto canvas with paint. Andree isn’t capturing landscapes so much as the contrasting nature of time – both fleeting and eternal.
In one arresting work, a single cloud is sculpturesque. In another, a mottled sky takes on the barely pink of dusk. They capture brief moments of exquisite beauty while reminding us of what Andree refers to as the ‘entire vastness of time’.
Andree’s new works ditch the ‘crutch’, as he calls it, of the horizon. No more anchoring the eye with dirt and rock. Instead, he’s obsessed with the goldmine of inspiration in the atmosphere. Sky is the solid focus. The landscape, if present at all, is secondary.
Although more abstract than ‘landscape’, the paintings are very much an ode to place. Amid the bustle of family life and the juggle of work, the ever-changing sky over Kunanyi/Mt Wellington is a constant reminder for Andree to stop and to appreciate.
The title for the show references C.S. Lewis’ fictional Dawn Treader, a ship that sails from west to east, symbolising fresh hope and new beginnings.
Two side-by-side paintings capture the changing light as day turns to night (and vice versa) against the southern and northern slopes of Kunanyi. It’s a playful and clever homage to the diptych of mountain and sky as viewed from his front porch and backyard – his slice of suburban paradise.
“As a painter my job is to record the world, and this is the world I live in,” Andree says. He’s swapped long drives for staying put, answering to the sky he lives under.
Andree abhors ‘art wank’ and isn’t trying to be profound, but his paintings are just that. You can sense the hours that went into honouring both this exact time and place and acknowledging the ‘momentary nature of existence’.
People have been painting this sky for more than 60,000 years and Andree sees himself as ‘just part of a long heritage of people who have wanted to capture this world’.
While not politically motivated, Andree’s works of observation and ‘record keeping’ are a form of activism – reminding us to connect with and, ultimately, protect the world around us.
Catalogue essay by Sally Glaetzer 2025
