"What is this struggle going on within me?

It is surfacing more and more over these past few years. I don't need this confusion, this self doubt of direction. I have enough inner battles, trying to capture what's important to me as it is.

You can read ad infinitum of the landscape painter trying to "Paint my
feelings" "Capture the light" "Render the mood of a scene". There is
nothing particularly new or unique in this ideology developed in part
through a natural progression of a very strong landscape tradition in
Australia. It is sad to see these expressions misused, abused and over
used to the point of becoming almost meaningless with insincerity.

They are though, I believe, some of the more important aims and ideals
at the core of the genuine landscape painter's psyche, I, like others,
do search for a means of expressing these qualities! I know for me these
are genuine and worthy goals. In this, there is a dilemma I feel will test me.
It has been a long held opinion of mine that too often the work of the
traditional landscape painter has been seen in an over familiar sort of way.
That is, known objects in the picture being seen superficially and
assessed according to a preconceived understanding of those objects.
How do I express my vision of the subject unambiguously. It's not a technical thing as for example, in composition.
It's far more elusive than that. I am doubting more often whether the direction I am taking can adequately reveal for example, the thrill of gazing at the last rays of sunlight in the tree tops. I can paint something of what it looks like but I am trying to paint how I feel!
I want my pictures to sing the songs I sang when I painted them. My hope is that if I can paint with the joy of that moment, something of my emotional responses to the moment will shine through. But is hope enough? This is the
dilemma. Do I search for a new way to express what I want to say, or do I trust the natural evolutionary processes of my dissatisfaction to spiral me to my goals? I can only hope that I do "something" as a result of this crossroad at which I now stand."

Warwick Fuller 1993

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Well it seems like yesterday when those weighty questions prodded and goaded me. To continue the crossroad metaphor, I took the dirt road and I pray that the smallness of that "evolutionary spiral" is as a result of the
(expected) difficulties along that road, and that I don't just have feet of clay.

Perhaps it is pretentious believing I might be able to paint more than a visual interpretation of the physical world before me. But that is still my goal, the carrot, which makes me just as excited to paint as ever I have been.

Warwick Fuller 2003

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