Waterline (Sundown Run) 2001

TIM STORRIER born 1949

Waterline (Sundown Run) 2001

synthetic polymer paint on canvas
106.5 x 234.5 cm; 114.5 x 252.0 cm (framed)
signed lower right: Storrier

Provenance:
Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne, 2001
Private collection
Christie's, Melbourne, 10 April 2006, lot 3
Private collection, Sydney
Estate of the above

Exhibited:
Storrier, Metro 5 Gallery, Melbourne, 10 October - 4 November 2001

Estimate: $120000 - 160000

Result Hammer: $130000

Tim Storrier is celebrated as one of Australia’s greatest living landscape painters and most commercially successful artists.¹ Now in his seventy-fifth year, with a career spanning over five decades, his works have captivated audiences since his teenage years when, as Steve Meacham describes it, ‘[Storrier] appeared, like a comet across the artistic sky, as the recipient of the prestigious Sir John Sulman Prize in 1968, its youngest-ever winner’.²

While the earth, sky, and to a lesser degree, water, feature significantly in Storrier’s oeuvre, it is fire that has consumed his attention and emerged as the dominate cornerstone of his visual imagery. 

Waterline (Sundown Run) 2001 is a magnificent example of the artist’s iconic flaming works. First displayed at Melbourne’s Metro 5 Gallery in 2001, in a ‘sell-out exhibition of
[Storrier’s] new paintings’, the work has since moved between private collections.³

The present work combines fire, sky, water and land on an impressive scale. A smouldering log dominates the centre of the canvas; its light illuminating the sun-scorched earth beneath it, which extends into an expansive darkness beyond. The scene is flanked by a brilliant, sun-kissed and cloud-scattered sky above, and calm, reflective water below. 

The level of detail that Storrier is able to achieve – in the charcoal, embers, earth, clouds, smoke and flames – creates an effect that borders on photorealism. Indeed, the smoke emanating from the fire is so softly and expertly rendered that it is hard to distinguish where it ends and the sky begins. 

The brilliance of the work is enhanced by Storrier’s skilful use of paint. Opting for acrylic over oils, Storrier creates what has been described as the ‘Leonardo effect’ – a layered, glazed, and at times even opaque effect which results in beautifully diffused, rich, and dense colours. This technique intensifies the warmth and glow of light that is dispersed across water, flame, and sky; melding the foreground, middle ground
and background. 

Fire is an ‘eternally ancient choice of subject matter’.⁴ Least of all in Australia, where ‘bushfires have always been a fact of life in Australia and in art’.⁵ As Sasha Grishin notes, the subject has preoccupied the nation’s artistic focus, including that of Indigenous artists, colonial artists such as John Longstaff (1861-1941) and his Continent of Fire (1898), as well as the Australian ‘modernist heroes’, among them Russell Drysdale (1912-1981), Arthur Boyd (1920-1999), Sidney Nolan (1917-1992), and of course, Storrier.⁶ It is an element that holds near endless possibilities, filled with dualities and contrasts. It can be fierce and gentle, destructive and regenerative, warming and scalding, comforting and terrifying, both a source of life and harbinger of death. 

Storrier’s fascination with the subject largely began in the 1980s with his revered ‘point to point’, or ‘burning rope’ paintings, which depict suspended burning ropes in the vast Australian outback.⁷ Since then fire, alongside earth, sky, and water, has persisted as a theme that Storrier has returned to time and again with a passion and perseverance akin to Claude Monet’s haystack studies. As Jeff Makin puts it:  

Some things never date. The sky, earth, fire, water, air, nature. And art based in such constants seems to share an equally timeless appeal.⁸ 

Indeed, despite the consistency in Storrier’s subject matter and composition, each work stands apart, reflecting different moments in time and atmospheric conditions.
As a result, every painting feels fresh and distinctive — a unique, non-replicable snapshot of the Australian outback and its elements.

The series of paintings that launched at the Metro 5 exhibition, including Waterline (Sundown Run), marked a change in Storrier’s depiction of fire. While Waterline (Sundown Run) (2001) shares some resemblance to The Lament of the Stream 2000, and Nostalgia (Empire of the Coals) 2011 – the AGNSW Wynne Prize Finalist – among others, the present work is more unusual in its tone and palette. Unlike these other works which blaze with heat, vibrancy, and furious flames, Waterline (Sundown Run) is softer, quieter, more muted. Its hues generate a calmness that reflect the smouldering log, soft, dying flames, and gentle dusk. As Steve Meacham observes: 

Storrier’s landscape images often seem to have been baked in the same oven as Drysdale’s, employing his sunburnt colour palette.⁹

Despite the simplicity of the subject matter, Storrier’s works contain a significant degree of ambiguity and uncertainty. If it weren’t for the clue in the title, it would be hard to tell if this were dusk or dawn. The ambiguity of both time and meaning in this work is not unintentional. Indeed, meaning is often elusive in Storrier’s work – a point emphasised by the artist himself: 

It is worth restating that when it comes to considering paintings, the less said the better … With the post-modern fashion for explanatory statements by artists, I feel reticent when explaining my work.¹⁰

With over 60 solo exhibitions to his name and multiple awards, including two Sulman Prizes, Storrier continues to be an unparalleled Australian artistic force. A longtime favourite among collectors and notable Australian critics including Donald Brooks and Paul McGillick, Storrier is represented in the collections of all major Australian museums, including the National Gallery of Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of Western Australia, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, as well as prominent regional galleries. Internationally, his art is featured in significant collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Footnotes

1. ‘Metro 5 to Show Storriers,’ Malvern Prahran Leader, Melbourne, 10 October 2001; Lumby, C., Tim Storrier: The Art of the Outsider, Craftsman House, Sydney, 2000 Wednesday. 

2. Meacham, S., ‘Australian Storrier’, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, 22 March 2003 

3. Makin, J., ‘No Challenge So Deep,’ The Herald Sun, Melbourne, 15 October 2001

4. Hopkirk, F., ‘Man on Fire: The Art of Tim Storrier and Other Desert Masters,’ Aboriginal Art Directory, 20 May 2014, accessed October 2024: https://news.aboriginalartdirectory.com/2014/05/man-on-fire-the-art-of-tim-storrier-and-other-desert-masters.php.

5. Grishin, S., ‘Jan Senbergs: Heat – Fire – Smoke,’ Meanjin, Brisbane, vol.74, no.2, 1 June 2015, pp.32-48

6. Ibid.

7. Meacham, S., op. cit.

8. Makin, J., op. cit.

9. Meacham, S., op. cit.

10. Tim Storrier, quoted in Johnson, D., ‘Sky’s the Limit as Storrier Shows His Best in
Brisbane Exhibition,’ In Queensland, Brisbane, 17 September 2020, accessed October 2024: https://www.inqld.com.au/culture/2020/09/17/after-four-decades-storrier-showing-his-best-in-brisbane-exhibit

Alice Evatt 

Dr Alice Evatt is a Research Fellow of Kellogg College at the University of Oxford.  Alice has experience in the art market, having interned at Sotheby’s London and worked with the Hogarth Galleries in Sydney

• 

  Cameron Menzies, Chairman & Head of Private Sales

  cmenzies@menziesartbrands.com
  +61 (0) 466 636 142 

• 

  John Keats, Chief Executive Officer

  jkeats@menziesartbrands.com
  +61 (0) 3 9832 8700
  +61 (0) 403 159 785

• 

  Catherine Baxendale, Senior Art Specialist

  cbaxendale@menziesartbrands.com
  +61 (0) 2 8344 5404
  +61 (0) 423 067 180

• 

  Asta Cameron, Art Specialist

  acameron@menziesartbrands.com
  +61 (0) 3 9832 8700
  +61 (0) 400 914 088

• 

  Clementine Retallack, Art Specialist

  cretallack@menziesartbrands.com
  +61 (0) 2 8344 5404
  +61 (0) 478 493 026