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Art and music run in parallel streams for Peter Hudson, and have been a central focus since his teenage years.
“As a teenager, I started playing music. Then art came into the curriculum at school and all of a sudden there were things I could do,” he tells InReview.
“I went to art college in 1969. Nothing was the same again after that. I fell in love with making art and drawing. All along I’ve been playing in bands – rock’n’roll, blues, drumming. Art and music are the things that I can do and enjoy.
“At 75 I am enjoying both – and learning more than ever before. It is an apprenticeship that never ends.”
Based on the Sunshine Coast, Hudson’s fourth solo exhibition at Mitchell Fine Art in Fortitude Valley elevates local landscapes – portraits of each of the Glasshouse Mountains that he sees every day, a local farm, and imaginative explorations of the stars, moon and Earth.
In Man Watching the Moon Watching the Land meet the Sea (2026), water, filled with sharks, spotty rays and jellyfish, forms a u-shaped loop into which the eye is drawn, meeting the forest (upside down as though reflected) under a patch of bird-filled sky. Light radiates from the centre, and parallel tentacle-like lines in purple echo the vortex. As the sea darkens to meet the sky, these purple lines capture the moon between spidery legs.
The balance and rhythms established in this charcoal and crayon drawing echo the seismic rhythm of the sea and evoke Kim Guthrie’s assessment of Hudson’s work as “performing in the time signature of life”. For Hudson, the intertidal zone where the land meets the sea and the relationship with the moon “are a particular fascination to me”.
See Kim Guthrie’s essay noosaregionalgallery.com.au/exhibition/peter-hudson-right-place-right-time
To that extent, he feels as though in some ways he is: “Painting the same painting over and over again. In that subject alone I find endless mystery and power. This huge mystical thing given to us is taken for granted. Animals rather than humans interest me; they are cleverer than us. And better at living on the planet. For that reason, I prefer to paint landscapes void of human content, and keep it to the natural world.”
The Garden of the Old Lady (2025) is a portrait of Tibberoowuccum (one of the Glasshouse Mountains), her sheer cliff faces profiled and then receding along the ridge line like a sprawling lion, with the bush naturalistic around her. At her feet, the lower half of the canvas shows a different style of bush, upside down, containing a heightened, vibrant light. For Hudson, the upside down, employed in many of these canvases, is a reminder of the earth’s spin every 24 hours.
“We are flying around the sun, not feeling a thing; there’s power and mystery in that orbit. At some point every day we are upside down.”
He paints his wondering about the natural world without offering a conclusion: “I like a painting that draws you in and spits you out as well. With a question to it.”
References to painters who explore similarly existential territory echo through these works. Lawrence Daws (1927-2025) was local, and Hudson’s gentle pencil and crayon portrait evokes their friendship. Changing perspectives within the work are a reminder of the legacy of William Robinson (1936-2025), and Gordon Shepherdson (1934-2019) comes to mind in Hudson’s The Sea at Night (2026), with a serpent dwelling just under the surface and the moon drawing a presence from the water.
Hudson believes that his subject has chosen him, rather than the reverse. This selection of paintings include a plein air tribute to Gil Jamieson (1934-1992) of Cania Gorge (Looking for Gil Jamieson), near Jamieson’s Monto home, the uncanny Carnarvon Gorge Landscape, which exudes the magnetic presence of that place, and a tribute to Hudson’s own Maleny home in Hankinsons Farm Maleny (2026), all becoming a powerful evocation of place. As a country kid, he remembers connecting to nature.
“I have feelings of landscape from really early – like warm wind blowing on your face. Something happened back then.”
That “something” continues to fuel his painting, a response to “the deep mystery of being here: the gift of an art-life” (Peter Hudson, Peter Hudson, Artist Profile, Issue 48, 2018).
Not Dark Yet: Peter Hudson exhibits at Mitchell Fine Art, Fortitude Valley, May 19 to June 13.
mitchellfineartgallery.com/blogs/news/peter-hudson-not-dark-yet
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