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This clip shows Australian artist Clifton Pugh describing his approach to landscape painting. Pugh, who states that he views his work as being purely subjective, explains how his paintings are a composite of what he sees in the landscape rather than an accurate replication. He argues that this approach offers a form of truth. The clip includes cutaways of Pugh’s landscape paintings.

Educational value points

• The clip focuses on artist Clifton Pugh (1924–90). Pugh left school at the age of 14 during the Great Depression. He enlisted in the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) in 1942, and served in New Guinea and in post-Second World War Japan. After the War, he studied at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, funded by the Australian Commonwealth Reconstruction Scheme. His first solo show in 1957 was well received by critics, and he soon established a reputation as a landscape and portrait painter, winning the prestigious Archibald Prize for Portraiture three times. He was awarded the Order of Australia in 1985 for his outstanding contribution to art and the environment.

• Pugh’s landscapes, some of which are shown in the clip, have been described as cruel and savage, depicting the struggle for survival against the fittingly stark backdrop of the Australian bush. Artist and critic James Gleeson noted that in Pugh’s paintings the bush becomes a battlefield, but that 'Pugh sees this terrible, inevitable pageant of life and death with clear, unsentimental eyes’ (Australian Painters, Lansdown Press, 1986).

• Pugh is featured talking about his approach to landscape painting. For Pugh, painting an amalgam of his surroundings produces a more authentic vision than taking 'the myopic view of something’. Pugh’s description of his landscapes, as a composite of what he sees around him, reflects the influence of Impressionism on his painting technique.

• Pugh was also influenced by Expressionism and elements of abstract art, which he combined to create a distinctive style of his own. Expressionism, with its heightened, symbolic colours and exaggerated imagery, emphasises subjective feelings over objective observations. Expressionist painting tends to reflect the artist’s state of mind, rather than replicate the external world. Pugh used his art to express his view of humanity, a view coloured by his experiences during the Second World War and in post-War Japan.

• Pugh is depicted at his studio at 'Dunmoochin’. In 1951, Pugh’s love of the bush led him to Cottle’s Bridge outside Melbourne. He purchased land there, naming it 'Dunmoochin’, and built a mud-brick house and studio. Pugh, together with other artists who were inspired by the natural environment, formed the Dunmoochin Artists Society in 1953. Shortly before his death in 1990, Pugh set up the Dunmoochin Foundation to preserve the bushland and enable artists to use the studios there.

• Pugh was a key figure among painters concerned with the landscape, frequently painting the bush and its wildlife. He was also vocal about the destructive effects of introduced species on the environment. His second wife, Judith Pugh, recalls that he spent the first year at Dunmoochin hardly painting at all, but wandering through the bush, 'learning how its greys are made of subtle gradations of blues, pinks, and yellows: how the intricate pattern of life of tiny insects, of birds and animals, mimics our own’ (www.portrait.gov.au).

This clip starts approximately 7 minutes into the documentary.

Clifton Pugh’s interview plays over footage of his paintings.
Clifton Pugh The grass I do on the spot. That’s sort – what I will call my ‘look and put paintings’, those sort of things like the Kimberly pictures. Ah, they’re immediate, although I still sort of design them and change them a bit and they take a bit from there – the way I paint, I walk through an area and I find a very comfortable place to sit down ‘cause painting’s all difficult enough. Therefore I make everything as easy as possible, find a nice spot, underneath a nice tree or something or other, and get comfortable and I might paint what’s in front of me there, what’s behind me there, what’s on each side of me. Otherwise I make up a composite of what the area is that I’m in and I think that tells far more truth about that area than taking the myopic view of something, you see. So I just incorporate the lot – very emotional painter. In fact, to me, you see there’s nothing objective in my thinking at all – purely subjective. In fact, there’s no such thing as objective thinking, regardless of what the academics say. That to me is dead. It’s something that’s killed. Once you start being objective about something, you’re killing it. Whereas if you’re subjective – people are subjective – it’s through yourself, always through yourself. I don’t mean that as being selfish or egotistical. You think through yourself. Otherwise there’s no point in it – no point in thinking about it.