Sandhill and sea

'I try in my work to express the joy of living ... All my life I have experienced thrills of happiness on noting the sweep and colour of a hill, the curve of a wave, the dazzling whiteness of clouds ... the thousand and one arrangements and colour nuances which the eye registers as its surveys the daily scene.'
– Kenneth Macqueen, 1948

Kenneth Macqueen’s work celebrates the undulations of the Darling Downs landscape and the coastal regions of Moreton Bay in south-eastern Queensland, where he settled to farm the land in 1922. A modernist in temperament and outlook, his simplified forms were rendered with an emphasis on design and rhythm, and were celebrated for their lyrical and decorative qualities. Exclusively a watercolourist, Macqueen applied the transparent pigments of his medium with great skill to emphasise sunlight and shadow in response to the underlying shapes and patterns of nature and the sunny Queensland climate.