Description
‘Crossing XIII’
Neil Williams
oil on canvas
canvas size: 250 x 300mm
framed size: 275 x 325mm
‘Crossing’ is a sequence of fourteen small paintings depicting familiar roadside scenes from my hometown, Flinders. They include intersections, trees, road signs and the cruciform geometry of streetlights and power poles. Hung in a continuous horizontal line, the work is intended to be experienced by walking alongside it, allowing one image to give way to the next.
The paintings are not exact descriptions of particular places so much as observations of passing through them. Roads become pauses, crossings become moments of decision, and the ordinary infrastructure of the landscape begins to carry a quiet symbolic weight. Repetition, subtle shifts in light and atmosphere, and the restrained palette encourage a slower reading, where meaning accumulates gradually rather than announcing itself.
The structure of the work draws inspiration from Colin McCahon’s The Fourteen Stations of the Cross. Each painting responds, in its own way, to one of the fourteen stations, translating the sequence of the biblical narrative into a contemporary landscape of roads, crossings, trees and signs. The references are deliberately understated; rather than illustrating the stations directly, the paintings explore their underlying sense of passage, interruption, endurance and transition.
In this way, Crossing considers how a pilgrimage might exist beyond the traditionally sacred. It may also be found in the familiar roads we travel every day, where movement, landscape and contemplation quietly intersect. It is about how an ordinary Australian landscape can become contemplative through repetition, movement and attention.
