Winter Morning on York Street

Looking down York Street to the Queen Victoria Building, the jewel in Sydney’s crown.  The QVB, has grandeur, it is sheer majesty.  For some reason, it has its own entity – its own spirit.  It inspires loyalty; it thrills people today as much as it did when it opened in July 1898.  It gives people a sense of excitement when they walk into it.  Here Ramon has captured the two huge copper covered domes that can be seen from blocks away.  On a damp winters day like in this scene shoppers still throng towards this majestic building.  Ramon has used the wet pavement to reflect the light upwards onto the subjects in this work.  It makes a usual dreary scene romantic.

He is able to capture a certain mood, and is able to focus on softer, more intimate landscapes in which people figure more prominently, rather than the wide-open scenes that most landscape artists paint.  He prefers to paint in the early morning and late afternoon when distant objects tend to fade into a soft haze.  These soft colours are quite remarkable considering Ramon only uses four primary colour paints, red, yellow, blue and white.  He mixes these over and over to obtain the colours he desires.  No other Australian painter presents the harsh Australian bush with such softness and subtlety.  The serenity of his art could hardly be further removed from the turbulence of his early life.  Years from now, whether it is 5, 20 or 100 years, Ramon is destined to be one of the greatest artist’s in this century…

Like all traditional artists Ramon Ward-Thompson’s subjects are created for him by nature.  It is the treatment of light painting into the sun that makes his work so special.