On "The Heysen Trail"

I have travelled to many locations of the Heysen Trail over the past 30 years. The areas most fascinating to me are the Northern (Flinders Ranges) and Southern (Cape Jervis) sections because they have offered me a visual plethora of unique spectacular scenery, majestic geological structures and vast expanses of landscape.  It has given me an abundance of material to paint and has formed a large part my artistic career.   I have also gained important knowledge and understanding of the pioneering history and aboriginal cultures of these places and my paintings are an expressive portrayal of a combination of all these things.

(b.1947, Karoonda,
South Australia)

2006 @ The Hilton
"Peter Coad's paintings fix a gravitational force between paint and Australia's ancient landforms. The images resonate with his discoveries of remote and mythic places. There is a strong sense that he has felt and seen the real thing - he paints the landscape with eyes of the heart and mind. Peter paints places that have stirred his being, he uncovers what we all long to discover when we walk beyond known boundaries, touching the earth and longing to discover our place in the world. His paintings mobilize the imagination and reveal the spirit, mystery and infinite beauty of Gondwana."
- Pru J. Evans, formerly of the National Galleries Canberra and Victoria

2005 - Visions, Vistas and Volcanoes
After revisiting areas of landscape previously explored, I discovered even more interesting and stimulating elements that constitute the formation of the land than I had observed before. This added awareness assisted me in my journeys of the past few years. So, from a variety of Australian landscapes to the Hawaiian landscape, this exhibition relates to what I have absorbed visually and emotionally over this time.

The series on volcanoes, which I have produced in a conceptual style using my perspective of concentrated sections of the structures, resulted from my visit last year to the big island of Hawaii where I was able to view from many angles, panoramas of erupted and erupting volcanoes. I have used adaptations of volcanoes many times in backgrounds of my landscapes but always in their peaked, un-erupted state, but witnessing the creation of new landmass was truly exciting and motivating artistically.

As with all my work, I endeavour to express my strong engagement with the environment and a personal sense of place. These paintings are not an accurate interpretation of a chosen location, what I want to translate or define are my own distinctive visions and to convey the real essence of the vistas exposing much that is unseen such as the harmony and balance and the indigenous spirituality of the earth.

Artist Profile:
Peter’s first ten years spent in the rural town of Karoonda, South Australia, has had significant influence on his vision as an artist as his vast landscape paintings reveal. His confident use of vibrant colour make his paintings distinctive, powerful, and full of vitality, individuality and perception.

They capture the glowing earthy yellows and oranges of the land and mountains, the ephemeral purples, aqua and blues of the sky and lagoons and reflect the uniqueness of the terrain, the changes of the day and season and one can feel he has connections and awareness of the indigenous myths and legends of the land.

His constant obsession to further his knowledge and understanding of ancient landscapes and cultures, has taken him on travels to many countries of the world and throughout Australia. These travels and discussions with local people have assisted in creating other diverse contemporary and abstract series of works such as Icons for Travellers (1995), Paintings from a Bali Sketchbook (1993), Ancient Documents (1999 – 2000), Pearl Divers Graves (2002), Volcanoes (2005), composed following trips to the United States and Egypt, Bali, Morocco and Japan, Broome in Western Australia and Hawaii.

From his first solo exhibition held in 1978, recognition, demand for his work, and the compulsive need to express his ideas and emotions in paintings, was eventually the motivation to concentrate on a full-time career as an artist.

With a further 45 solo exhibitions and numerous group shows to his credit, he has attracted a substantial body of private corporate collectors within Australia and Overseas. He has exhibited widely throughout Australia and Asia, served two terms as the Vice President of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, lectured on his art, been a participant, advisor and curator of exhibitions in Australia, Malaysia and Japan and at 58 years of age, has become one of Australia’s leading artists and ambassadors.

Coad is also well-known to Film audiences as he was commissioned by internationally acclaimed Australian Film Director, Rolf de Heer, to paint 14 large canvases which appear as static scenes in his award winning film “The Tracker” (A main feature of the Adelaide Film Festival of Arts 2002 and the 51st Melbourne International Film Festival, also selected to participate in the 59th Venice International and other overseas Film Festivals). The inclusion of the original artwork in this wa is a first for Australian feature film.

ABOUT THE TRACKER, 2002:
It is always daring when well-established artists, who have made their mark in a particular genre, go on to try something entirely new. Peter Coad's latest works, commissioned as an integral part of the feature film The Tracker, written and directed by Rolf de Heer, reveals the achievement of a mature and self-assured artist.

Coad chose early in his career to paint in series. He knows the collective impact of his works as well as the effect of an individual image. He is a painter fired by colour. Orange and cobalt blue, deep cadmium on venetian red, the jostling of purple and turquoise, striations of glossy black, flicks of titanium white combine to create rich, glowing surfaces. His vision is personal and poetic. His paintings do not take us away from the real landscape - they plunge us straight into it.

The Tracker's powerful human drama with its complex post-colonial politics, moral and spiritual scope and wide-ranging referneces for today's audiences recquired symbols and mythic understanding. Coad's power and ability to align the past and present and create imagery which engages the viewer's mind and emotions was what attracted de Heer to his work and to commission the paintings for the film.

"Peter and I grew to know each other through a sort of interconnection between paintings and film... he'd seen a film I'd directed, Dingo (1991), was inspired by it and shifted an idea from the film onto one of his paintings. I saw that painting at its exhibition, Spirits in Landscape (1997), among many other paintings. I felt drawn to them in much the same way as I'd felt drawn to the Kimberley landscape and a slow period of gestation started. Iknew that one day, somehow, on something unknown, we'd collaborate."
- Rolf de Heer, Director The Tracker (2002)

ARTIST'S COMMENT:
"My love and passion for all landscapes and cultures form my creative energies. The impulse of these creative energies arises from an awareness of spirituality, mystery, greatness and infinite space. Let my work always be the pursuit of love between persons, and the expression of mankind's love for nature."
- Peter Coad, 30 June 1997

"Peter's birth in South Australia's Murray Mallee town of Karoonda in 1947 has given him a physical connection to the earth and a feeling of being "spiritually in tune" with the Australian desert landscape, its indigenous people and their Dreamtime stories.

Hid distinctive use of swathes of unmodulated and modulated colour, running in tandem or opposition, vigorous application of vibrant pigments, over-struck skeletal trees, rhythmic grasses and wildlife - often birds or other native animals - reveal a "reverence for life" in its natural/sacred state.

His work is deeply informed by his direct experiences as an inveterate traveller with a passion for the vast outback, and insatiable thirst for knowledge of ancient cultures, their myths, legends and artistic iconography.

His version of realism is not photographic but verges on the naive, giving his works an inner drama and hierarchy of importance otherwise unavailable to him if constrained by photorealism."
- Extract from Selected Contemporary Artists of Australia by Michael Berry