signed lower right: Coburn
Provenance: The Artist

Exhibited:
John Coburn: Twelve Paintings and their studies, Australian Galleries 25 November – 17 December 2003, cat. no. 8

And the bush hath friends to meet him, and their kindly voices greet him
In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars
And he sees the vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended
And at night the wonderous glory of the everlasting stars

The paintings of Coburn’s late period represent a culmination of his life’s work; a body of work which stretches over six decades. Related to the Earth series paintings of 1981-82, The Sunlit Plains (For Banjo Patterson) 2003 is a reprisal of Coburn’s homage to the purity of the American Mark Rothko’s powerful abstractions and the idyllic descriptions of outback Australia in Banjo Patterson’s Clancy of the Overflow. Reference to previous work was a process Coburn found enriching. As he recalled in an interview with Nadine Amadio 'it is as if the returning and the remembering illuminates and deepens the image, exposing new facets and new depths.' 1

1 Amadio, N., John Coburn: Paintings, Craftsman House, Roseville, 1988, p.110.