Now if I had to pare down my very favourite artists to just a handful,
(the rationale being those clever creative types who make us look once, twice, thrice
to see more in each artwork in every glance),
then Jeffrey Smart would be in the curated list.
As a small child, on visits to the Art Gallery of South Australia,
it was always his works which I asked to be allowed to see first,
because their mix of realism and wit utterly captivated my young imagination.
Here was a painting which was as real as a photograph,
and yet it wasn't: it was so much more,
because it was layered with gentle satire and observations of modern life.
So when I discovered that a collection of over 40 of his works are currently on display
at an exhibition at the TarraWarra Museum of Art
I was there with my ears pinned back,
eager to explore more about this Australian painter's works.
The collection covers his artwork from 1940 through to 2011,
when he retired from painting.
In playing with large urban spaces - mostly of areas not considered beautiful by traditional thinking -
and placing human figures strikingly amongst them in considered locations and poses,
Smart was able to inject a sense of a mutual glaze frozen in time:
while the subjects look at us,
we look at them and their setting.