Sketch for 'La costa metamorphica'

The painting from both these drawings [see also 67.1995.4] was completed in 1984. For another related drawing see Lou Klepac's 'James Gleeson, landscape out of nature', Beagle Press, Sydney, 1987, pl. 61. Having built up a body of drawings since 1977, Gleeson turned to them in his search for studies suitable for paintings. This explains why some drawings precede some paintings by several years. Occasionally more than one drawing was used for various parts of a painting. In 'La costa metamorphica' the principal elements of both studies are combined in a more intense composition.

'Like a great fusion of different kinds of shapes brought together to form a strange coastal scene ...What interested me was how one could use shapes, forms, that individually, in little detail, suggest one thing, but when combined with other shapes, raise this doubt, this uncertainty in the mind, this feeling of not being sure of what you are looking at', Gleeson quoted in Renée Free's unpublished catalogue of James Gleeson's work

Hendrik Kolenberg and Anne Ryan, 'James Gleeson: drawings for paintings', Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2003, pg. 72.