signed lower right: Coburn
Provenance: The estate of John Coburn

'When Coburn was released from the Navy following the Second World War and commenced his art studies at East Sydney Technical College, he was introduced to Aboriginal Art and recalls frequently visiting the museum in Sydney to draw from Aboriginal shields, barks and from reproductions of cave paintings. On seeing the exhibition French Painting Today in 1953, particularly the work of Mannessier, Picasso, Matisse and Miro, he intuitively felt the way had opened to him through which he could combine the tradition of Modern French abstract painting with the spiritualism inherent in Aboriginal art, and he could deploy this strategy to interpret the Australian landscape.'1

Coburn’s 1987 Journey to the Northern Territory, the neighbouring Kimberley and Central Desert, was important to the development of this direction in his work. The Kimberley landscape, its people and their paintings imbued his work with ‘a precious spiritual magic’; his late paintings are enriched by his experiences of the area, the work of the Warman School artists and particularly Rover Thomas. As a young man, Rover Thomas had worked as a stockman on cattle stations throughout the Kimberley and became a permanent member of the Warman community in 1975. The Sunlit Plains Extended (Banjo Patterson) presents Coburn’s reply to the iconic Australian verse Clancy of the Overflow, which paints the story of another stockman, Clancy, who is ‘greeted by the bush’ and to whom the ‘breeze murmurs’. The poem is a celebration of the land, of a relationship with the land and of a simple spirituality.

Coburn’s resonance with Aboriginal painting and his own deep connection with the land are combined with powerful economy in this painting, to create a statement of personal spirituality which transcends landscape painting and distils the very essence of the land. The painting is constructed from an arrangement of superbly simplified shapes of termite mounds and the bold silhouette of Uluru.

1Dr Sasha Grishin, ‘John Coburn and his vision of the Australian Landscape’, in John Coburn: Recent Work, Australian Galleries Melbourne June 2001