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If you’ve ever met Luke Sciberras you’ll know he’s larger than life. Full of joie de vivre and good humour, he attacks life with gusto from his fabulous garden to his renowned cooking skills so it’s no surprise that this life force is also manifested through his art.

He’s known chiefly for his landscape paintings which are created with layers of glorious colour and a variety of marks. His drawings and plein air works have an immediacy which take us into his experience – whether it’s a boab tree a bird or a portrait. His art is always interpreted from life or from drawings made en plein air and brought back into the studio.

But paradoxically what is most important to him as a landscape painter is in fact people. Those who are the custodians or owners of the landscape are just as important to him as the landscape itself and he needs to connect with them in order to create his work.

He’s painted landscapes around the world from Europe to China but it’s in Australia that he’s spent most of his painting life – interpreting the landscapes of far northern Queensland to Bruny Island in Tasmania, from the Kimberley coast in Western Australia to the central desert areas where he’s created his art with the indigenous people of those lands.

He’s had 40 solo shows, his work has been hung in the Art Gallery of NSW, is contained in the collections of many regional galleries, in corporate and major private collections and his upcoming show of paintings from Western Australia’s Kimberley coast opens at King Street Gallery on William in Sydney in March 2019.

I spoke with Luke in historic Hill End about 4 hours from Sydney where he has his studio in the midst of a wonderful artists’ community.

To hear the interview press ‘play’ beneath the feature photo above.

See a short video of Luke in his studio below.

Upcoming show

Show notes

‘Fireflies, Bullecourt’, 2017, oil on board, 160 x 360cm

‘Pinnacles Between, Belle Île’, 2018, oil on board, 160 x 240cm

Sun up, WA, 2018, oil on board,120 x 160cm

‘Spring Sun – HIll End’, oil on board, 2016, 60 x 85cm

                                         ‘Gallipoli Study 6, 2014, gouache and pastel on paper, 40 x 55cm

‘Goanna’, 2018, etching, 71 x 53cm

 

‘Wedgie’ 2012, mixed media on paper, 76 x 56cm

Ink on paper, Instagram, @luke_sciberras

‘Buffalo country, Katherine, NT’, 2016, oil on board, 124.5 x 162.5cm, finalist Wynne prize 2016

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5 thoughts on “Ep 64: Luke Sciberras”

  1. persey

    I’ve been a fan of Talking with Painters for a while and am peripatectically working my way through the back catalogue, sometimes listening to the same one more than a few times. It is always great when a new issue announces itself…( like getting your favourite magazine in the actual mail) and this interview with Luke Sciberras was non exception, brilliant. Wonderfully meandering and insightful. I love especially how he talks about being introduced and re-seeing landscape through the eyes of the traditional owners, it certainly makes up for some of the conventions we may (or may not)
    have picked up from formalised painting instruction and the history of landscape painting. Most of the Australian painters I admire are working from something similar to this respectful approach either individually or collaboratively. (John Wolseley, Jonathan Kimberley, are just two examples)

    Anyway, definitely love the show esp local content, and come back to Tasmania sometime soon.

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