Fred
WILLIAMS
Australia
1927
–
Australia
1982
England 1951-56
Chalk Creek
1977
oil on four canvases
A
106.0 (h)
x
101.0 (w)
cm
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth
Purchased 1978
© estate of Fred Williams
Chalk Creek is one of Williams’s greatest achievements painting outdoors in oils. The strength of this work resides in the fusion of expressive brushmarks with structure and luminous colour. Here the chalky creek bed is overlaid with vibrant painterly notations recalling Claude Monet’s painterly approach. There is also a sense of natural architecture in the dramatic landforms meeting water.
Williams painted the four panels in one day, capturing subtle changes in light and colour in his surroundings, and making very few alterations on his return to the studio. A quirk of this polyptych is that one of the canvases was turned horizontally, unlike the rest. It was not intentional but rather a consequence of the outdoor painting experience. Rather than trying to rectify this by painting another canvas, Williams felt it would never turn out with quite the same feeling and let it be. It was part of the authenticity of the experience.