Artist Michael Montague’s latest gift to Otway Health and Community Services, Night Falling Over Grey River, has received much praise and has been considered a “breath of fresh air” to both patients and employees.
Otway Health and Community Services is one of three Multipurpose Services in Victoria. It is managed in a style designed to increase community self-reliance and enhance the quality of life enjoyed by the local community. Therefore it is fitting that Montague’s work is a landscape of the local Otway area.
According to Montague, it was never his intention to replicate the sunset at Grey River, located in the Great Otway National Park.
“I’m not interested conveying in paint on canvas what a photographer can achieve with a camera,” he said. “I try to paint as much with my heart as I do with my hand. It is one of the most important elements in my paintbox, the heart rules everything for me, it goes on cooking, sizzling like shish kebab.”
According to Montague, his aim was to try and evoke the landscape in terms of its shape, form and colour, “looking for a kind of balance in the chaos”.
“The way I compose and reduce the structure and forms of the landscape in this painting is not always specific, but often implied or inferred. I use a colour range which is heightened with bold areas of Prussian blue, Australian sienna, transparent red oxide and Australian sap green, all colours that are found in the Otway landscape.”
Night Falling Over Grey River celebrates the Otway area and is a reminder of the public engagement and service that Otway Heath provides for the local community.
