This painting lives in belgium. It went there as part of a cross-cultural exhibition in 1997. Before it parted from these australian shores it was part of an exhibition in Bowral in the previous year. I look back now, in 2013, remembering it's central importance in that show, 1996. I was attending each day, and on the same morning two visitors entered the gallery. The first, a well known cafe merchant responded finally, after a brief stroll through the three rooms, "Rick, I left a book I was reading last year, and this painting reminds me of it.... it feels like Sarajevo on a very bad night." Shortly afterwards, a woman in her forties entered quietly and strolled around the three rooms, slowly. I had not seen her before. Finally, she stood before this same painting for almost ten minutes... a long time for anyone in front of a strange painting.... She turned. "Are you the artist?" Yes, i said.... and then came some memorable words ...... "I feel as though I have been sitting in a beautiful grotto, with water trickling all over me." The same painting .... ?? Yes, it was.

This canvas spread itself out over nearly 7 years between woe and go, in which shape it sits today. Surely not! Why? I have a mind that is often an embarrassment and a challenge to those closest to me. And yes, I have another difficulty, which is that I see what we all see, but on a tightrope. This rope hangs in a dark room that has no edges at all. [Detectable]. There is nothing and no-one there ... just a nervous system and a sense of humour. Yet this is supposed to be home. Sydney, my hometown. Creativity takes courage. Rope, two st vinny's egg rings, bits of wire and 3 knitting needles all found their way into this 'painting'. The purchase of this work paid for my removal to Broken Hill.

This painting came on the back of two larger works on the "sydney and bush" theme. It is clear that the extrusions are important. They are made of wood, screwed onto the frame, and painted, to be a part, yet apart from the central subject of the bush in regards to new culture on this ancient soil. My play on this subject, it's title, suggests something historic. I balk at this, yet is somehow so. This painter simply wishes to express the closest correlation to place and story possible under clumsy hands. And I believe in the value of the clumsy.

This work started off as a delicate beach / bush image. But the bug caught me ..... that bug that insists on front-line action and this meant some sort of breakage from comfort.

Beauty, however one envisages it, provides a deep human comfort...and sustenance. One of the purposes of beauty, surely....is to affirm the value of familiar ground. We are all terrified of the 'alien'.

I remember when this painting was first exhibited.... in 1996, alongside many similar works [which you can see in this series]..... ...........a man with his wife strolled into the bowral gallery .... She wandered off through the rooms full of works, but he , a coalminer from the Hunter Valley could not move past this one.... and asked for a stool to sit on. A large breath came out of him and another sailed in , and he said...."I've never seen anything like this in my life!" It was a human moment.But after 20 minutes he stated his opinion that certain changes were needed to make it better. Too late.

This painting belongs with my brother, who also makes mad things for mad people .. see his website , www.davidball.com.au This work was part of an issue i felt about the bossiness of the rectangle in our thinking generally.