JOHN COBURN

Nadine Amadio, John Coburn Paintings, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1988, pp. 132-3, illus. p. 203
Lou Klepac, John Coburn: The Spirit of Colour, The Beagle Press, Sydney, 2003, pp. 130, 215, illus. pl. 92

John Coburn had an abiding interest in the Australian landscape. Its inspiration ranged from the lush, green tropics of North Queensland, where he was born, through the Outback and into the Northern Territory, as he imbued each painting with the feel and spirit of the place. Primordial Garden, 1965-66 in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria is a major example of the former, while Western Desert Dreaming, 1987, through its forms and colours of the ancient earth, blends Aboriginal references with Coburn's own closeness to the land. Earth V, painted a few years previous, belongs to this second group, which translate the dramatic colours, weathered rocks and land formations into hot reds, deep browns and monolithic blacks of flat, hard-edged shapes. Visually luxuriant, they resonate with colour.
Although Earth V is related to a wide range of Coburn's paintings, it had its genesis in 1981 when he painted the first of a series of five similarly titled works (Earth III, 1982 is in the Perc Tucker Regional Art Gallery, Queensland). Each employs the rectangular format and horizontal composition, their panoramic size evoking the seemingly endless vastness of the Australian continent in a progression of powerfully reductive imagery and colour intensity. Always interested in making large works, the mural-like dimensions of Coburn's Earth V give it a surprising intimacy in that they draw the viewer into it. Moreover, the horizontal for Coburn was very much to do with the earth, just as the vertical symbolized God. Placement, space and edges are as central to the painting's success as the references to plains and distant mountain ranges. The series was a homage to the great American painter, Mark Rothko. Coburn, too, was a master of visual drama.