Brett Whiteley - Sydney Harbour and Landscapes

Sydney Harbour and Landscapes

Whiteley loved painting Sydney Harbour views in the 1970s such in his painting Interior with time past, which shows an interior and exterior view starting with a room that leads through open windows to the harbour full of boats outside. The table in the front of the room close to the viewer has minutely decorated vases and small objects, while a drawing on the left and a sculpture to the extreme right show how Whiteley often used erotic images in his works. He painted a view of his friend Patrick White as a rock or a headland in Headland; White had told Whiteley that in the next life he would like to come back as a rock. Whiteley painted other images of the Australian landscape, including a view of the south coast of New South Wales after it had been raining called South Coast After the Rain. He did paintings of the areas around Bathurst, Oberon and Marulan, all in New South Wales. He soon settled in Lavender Bay. He painted abstracted images of bush scenes such as The Bush and also images which resulted from experimentation with various drugs, such as alcohol in the humorous Self Portrait after three bottles of wine.