Visually rich and ambitious in scale, David Paulson’s new paintings successfully question our perception of the natural world and force us to re-examine the contours of what we habitually call reality.

Notwithstanding the artist’s commitment to figuration, these recent works both reveal and accentuate the abstract beauty that
underlies the structure of our universe and in doing so take us on a voyage into new territories.

I imagine the notion of getting lost in your own backyard is an idea that would please Paulson and one that can indeed serve as metaphor for his painting practice. To discover something hidden in the familiar, to get lost in something that was once identifiable, to then rediscover oneself and find the unseen in the seen. Paulson’s
painting practice leads him on a path of discovery - the back yard creek serves as a fitting reference point from which he attempts a transfiguration of his universe, both pictorially and personally, and it is the success of David’s work that he takes us with him.

Observing these paintings for the first time, the viewer is seduced by the intensity of Paulson’s chromatic palette and his eloquent delineation of form. Paulson’s considered use of line and his ability to intensify colour, transfigure the landscape into a vibrant composition of richly layered surfaces and subtle complexity.

On closer observation, what we recognized from afar becomes strangely unfamiliar and there is a beautiful moment in looking at these paintings (as in all great art), where we doubt ourselves and what we thought we knew,re-adjust our eyes, look again and find something new.

The brilliance of these paintings, I believe, lies in their ability to convey the abstract wonder of how an artist may observe the universe. The delineated contours of a painted rock flirt with a geometric otherness - no longer a rock but a solid rectilinear platonic shape that takes us elsewhere. Reflected sunlight on the water’s surface is depicted, not as a mere copy of the reflection, but an abstracted pattern rendered visible by the artist’s gesture in textured oil paint. Elsewhere, diagonal lines that ostensibly define the boundaries of a creek, operate simultaneously as independent formal elements that create a structural dynamic from which everything else in the composition relates. Through the process of looking, Paulson articulates, and therefore encourages the viewer, to contemplate the abstract nature of our own reality as he firmly declares ‘these are abstract paintings!’

In responding to the natural world, Paulson further embodies his paintings with a unique physical energy – that of their own of creation. The process of painting, itself a natural process, becomes an experience through which the artist may acquire a better understanding of his own impulses - to both lose and find oneself whilst working. The building up of surface, the utilization of glazing techniques, the addition and subtraction of form, not to mention Paulson’s penchant to sand back the painted surface of his canvases to reveal previous layers, confer a physical dimension to these paintings that combine poetically with their subject matter.

In conversation with David in the seclusion of the studio, it becomes obvious that his musical and artistic
tastes serve as an ongoing inspiration and accompaniment for his painting and are ultimately, I am convinced, revealed in his images. The rhythmic energy of a Beethoven sonata seems to find its visual manifestation in the way water moves and stirs through parts of his canvas, (yes, perhaps slightly against the tide). Rembrandt, never far away, finds a latter day soul-mate, (albeit in shorts and pink thongs), whose consideration of light likewise enables him to render visible the beauty of form against the mysteries of an unknown darkness. David mentions the importance of Tiepolo, and I see this revealed in his treatment of light in the painted corner of a composition. A brief, yet valuable moment demonstrating to me the beauty of painting as a unique and timeless language - a shared knowledge that enables artists to dialogue through time, place and culture. To have such old contemporaries is perhaps the best way to survive in the modern world. If, responding unconsciously to our basic psychological instincts, we indeed ask ourselves ‘where am I?’ before the inevitable ‘who am I?’ Paulson’s work gives visual trace to the complexities of discovering the self through one’s connection with the environment and the implicit relationship that links the fabric of our identity to geographical and cultural place. Place, in the context of Paulson’s art and life starts in his very own backyard in the hills of Maleny, Queensland, providing him with the subsequent inspiration, or should I say departure point for this new
series of works. In getting lost in his own backyard, Paulson seems to have discovered something about himself,
life and the practice of painting and it is with great pleasure that we have the opportunity to consider these discoveries for ourselves through the viewing of these recent works.
Miles Hall
March 2009