My paintings are the arena where I chase, tear, pull apart, manipulate, destroy, lose, hide, dissolve, disappear, die. Looking for and finding it time and again.

As an Australian citizen and a painter preoccupied with the landscape, amid the kind of battle described above, I cannot help but think about Philip Jones in his last book Ochre and Rust, as he gazes at the land in front of him stretching out until Lake Torrens and says,'the profound calm of this scene seems to deny history, the fabric torn since the first encounters (…)'.

From one battle to another, my paintings witness that ambiguity. It “seems”, therefore nothing is less sure. It seems calm but at what cost, and for whom? Whose story is it? Whose will it be? In that line, I want my landscapes to produce something disharmonious but stable, fantastic and frightening as well as infinite. I also want them to be delicate and intimate.

If to Marcel Proust, 'the journey needs new eyes rather than new horizons', then Lakes MUNGO and ARUMPO, showing an apparent bareness made of seemingly endless repetitive erosion patterns, deserve for a while that detour of giving some news.

Christophe Stibio © March/April 2009

Christophe will be holding his first solo exhibition with Flinders Lane Gallery in July 2010 and will also be showing in the group exhibition FRESH, from March 16 - April 10, 2010.