By Callum Ludwig
It can be easy to take our natural environment for granted in a busy world and you can forget that for those coming from afar, a trip to the Upper Yarra to see the stunning rainforest can be a jaw-dropping experience.
That amazement and wonder have been captured by the latest exhibition in the Warburton Waterwheel Gallery ‘Misty Mountains’ by Gwendal Guery.
Artist Gwendal Guery said he arrived in Melbourne and Australia eight or nine years ago and always really loved the forest here.
“The flora and fauna is so different when you come from Europe, and the rainforest is just amazing, I’d been painting for a long time before, then I had a big break and I was starting to go back to painting a bit so the forest around Melbourne was really a big inspiration for me,” he said.
“I have a holiday house in Warburton, so I knew about this place and thought it was the place to start.”
Mr Guery tries to come spend his weekends in Warburton as well as some time through the week, even though his seven-year-old daughter’s activities make it tricky at times.
Mr Guery said he’s always really loved nature, big mountains, and the feeling of being lost somewhere far from civilization.
“I never thought I would end up living in a huge city like Melbourne but that’s where I live now most of the time, so when I arrived in Warburton, I started riding in the forest,” he said.
“It’s amazing because I don’t feel like I’m under stress or pressure like I do in Melbourne, when I’m here I feel more relaxed and more at peace because I feel connected with nature and forest and I really enjoy the birds singing,”
“If I’m alone with just me and nature around, that’s really my happy place.”
Mr Guery is Breton, meaning he hails from the Lower Brittany region of northwest France. Most people in the region speak standard French as their first language nowadays, but the Breton language is the only Celtic language still widely in use in mainland Europe with just over 200,000 native speakers.
Mr Guery said he has travelled a lot, by bicycle mainly, including in North America, part of South America, Siberia, North Africa and Europe.
“Australia is really unique because if you go to all of the American continent, Europe, even North Africa, it’s not that different from what you can see in Europe, there’s bears and wolves in Europe, North America and in Siberia, there’s the same big raven or pine trees everywhere,”
“It’s beautiful and I love it, but in Australia, it’s just very different from other parts of the world, the birds are really amazing here, the kookaburras, the magpies and even just the songs of birds here are amazing,”
“When you arrive, cities are different, lots of things are different and everything feels exotic for the first two or three years, then it’s just normal because you live there, but the forest and the birds, koalas and wombats that I can see here, that’s just always amazing time and time again.”
Mr Guery’s landscape paintings, using both acrylic and oil, on canvas or wood can be found in the Warburton Waterwheel Gallery throughout November.
