Wendy McDonald returns to Boom for her second solo exhibition Sky Water Season; another poetic body of work responding to the artist’s immediate surroundings – the floodplains of South West NSW and the symbiosis she has found here as both artist and farmer.

Wendy’s paintings use a soft and celebratory palette, emphasising richness and growth in the landscape, an optimistic take on recent floods in the region. The quiet beauty of the uniquely Australian landscape is captured in these works - tree canopies are mirrored as the plentiful pools of water reflect the sky above.

ARTIST STATEMENT
 

"The Southern Basin Floodplains were awash with water in October 2022.

Sky Water Season was born out of these floods. The primary driver of my work is my experience of living deeply immersed in this ephemeral landscape. We levee banked our home and the home of friends and neighbours as we watched and waited while nature filled our rivers, creeks and lagoons. What then followed was an amazing season of abundance and rebirth for our country. Light shimmered, ancient trees renewed their canopies, birds and frogs chorused and everywhere I looked sky and water merged in a spectacle of abundance and renewal. I celebrated the landscape and painted.     

In his address at the opening of the Paddington Art Prize in 2022, artist Black Douglas spoke about the cycle of the wet being regarded as a matriarchal time. He portrayed this in his powerful 2022 Archibald Prize winning work Moby Dickens. Here in magnificent Barapa Barapa country, water is life and renewal and my paintings continue to be an advocate for acknowledgement of the ecological and cultural importance of our inland wetland systems." 

BIO
 

Artist Wendy McDonald lives and works on the floodplains at Thule, in south west NSW. Her work draws from the ecology of the local environment, the ebb and flow of the creeks and rivers and the dramatic changes of the seasons.

McDonald’s paintings are an unashamedly feminine interpretation of this ephemeral wetland landscape and advocate strongly for water policy which meaningfully reconnects and rehydrates country in these fragile places. Recent works are deeply embedded in the story of the community driven environmental restoration of the wetland known as The Pollack Swamp, a significant ecological and cultural heritage site closely connected to the famous Blandowski etchings of the 1850's.   
  
Wendy McDonald's work has been shown in galleries across NSW and Victoria and in Sydney and Melbourne, with pieces in private collections around the world. Her works have featured in numerous publications including Galah Magazine. She was honoured to be included in the 2018 Thames & Hudson publication "A Painted Landscape”, a survey of Australian landscape painting by Amber Creswell Bell.

Wendy has been a finalist in numerous awards including The NSW Parliament Plein Air Painting Prize (2016,2017 & 2018), the Paddington Art Prize, The Calleen Art Prize and The Swan Hill Print & Drawing Acquisitive Prize. In 2022 she was a recipient of the highly esteemed Defiance Gallery, Nock Residency Award, at the Paddington Art Prize for Australian Landscape.