Painting in open air

Artist Mark Dober is at home when he is in the great outdoors, surrounded by bush and with a paintbrush in his hand.

His latest artworks featuring large scale, wall-sized works on paper are on display at Hyphen – Wodonga Library Gallery.

Titled Riverbank, Dober created the works on site at various locations along the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers.

“They’re all a bit different,” he said.

“There’s watercolour medium that’s been used in two of the works, and the other works feature gouache, which is an opaque watercolour.

“The result is that you get stronger colour, stronger colour than you would get in watercolour, which is a more subtle, transparent medium.”

Dober, who lives in the central Victorian goldfields town of Castlemaine, enjoys being amongst nature.

“All my work, regardless of size or media, is made en Plein Air, which is French for open air painting outdoors,” he said.

“With my large works, the work is made sitting flat on the ground and the sheets are clipped to the boards.

“But what it all has in common is this desire to convey my experience, the experience of being within the landscape.”

The types of views he paints are not ones that people would typically capture in a photograph, but rather give off a sense of being within a landscape

“So everything that is around me, both near and far, is subject matter,” Dober said.

“If you look at these paintings, there’s always some foreground.

“There’s a sense that I’m there within the landscape.”

Dober’s artwork is on display in the Artspace Gallery until October 29.