Fred WILLIAMS
Australia 1927 – Australia 1982
England 1951-56

You Yangs landscape 1963
oil on composition board
Signed: l.r. corner, black oil "Fred Williams". Not dated.
119.5 (h) x 152.0 (w) cm
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney Purchased 1980
© estate of Fred Williams

The You Yangs paintings are Williams’s response to the apparent randomness of the terrain he encountered in this region of Victoria: the scatter of trees, bushes and rocks across open ground. Rather than adopting conventional perspective, Williams takes different viewpoints. The space is flattened and tilted towards us. At the same time he takes an aerial viewpoint of the microcosm within the macrocosm. The vertical and horizontal lines represent roads or fences in paddocks. In some of the You Yangs paintings the artist used a golden colour for the ground that he described as ‘painter’s honey’.