Deloraine artist Tony Smibert reflects on a lifelong pursuit of painting

In aesthetics - a philosophical study of art and beauty - the sublime is the strongest emotion, or as Smibert calls it: "the sense of awe or fear or majesty you might get in nature."

"Tasmania has it; it is the perfect landscape for a painter," he said.

"Some parts may have a superficially settled look, but underneath there is always a deep dreaming from its original inhabitants and especially in the wild places.

"It is a spiritual and beautiful place."

At his home and studio in Deloraine, the acclaimed abstract landscape painter is surrounded by the works of a life dedicated to art; one which has paid him back by the bucketload of paint.

Smibert - who has been the subject of more than 50 solo exhibitions - is now an internationally-renowned watercolourist whose muse has been our endlessly inspiring state - its rugged mountains and sweeping valleys - since arriving from Melbourne over 40 years ago.

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His works stand as a testament to a studentship which began as a young man studying at the National Gallery Art School in Victoria under the great Australian realist painter, John Brack.

After completing his studies there and at Melbourne University, Smibert taught for ten years as a specialist arts teacher before moving to Tasmania to paint full time after being influenced by his other great passion, Aikido, a martial art.

"I had come down with a very serious case of ambition to learn more." he said.

"I took what I knew from Aikido to apply it to painting. There I had learned that the real secret to a master pupil relationship is not just to find yourself a great teacher, but to be a serious student yourself.

"So, I started to study seriously."

The ambition came in the form of a desire to master a particular medium of painting, watercolour, which Smibert believed was best achievable by studying a great master, and he began pursuing the technique of the renowned British landscape painter J.M.W. Turner (1775 - 1851).

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"I wanted to learn the classic techniques, not to paint like Turner himself, but to be able to paint with the freedom he had; if one could possibly achieve that," he said.

This would lead him to become one of the eminent scholars on Turner's technique in watercolour alongside his own esteemed artistic career.

"Turner's technique has always been a big mystery to everybody," Smibert said.

"So, the little that I know about Turner's secrets, might make me seem expert. But there is so much more to be learned."

Modest in his appraisal of his knowledge as he is, Smibert has conducted master classes at some of the world's great galleries, including the Tate Britain, The National Gallery of Australia and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

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As well, he has published four books: two on the British watercolourist - Turner's Apprentice and How To Paint Like Turner - and two instructive works Tate Watercolour Manuel and Painting Landscapes from Your Imagination.

He was also appointed a Member of the Order of Australia in 2016.

Now an accomplished artist himself, Smibert looks to his other great influences including abstract American painters like Franz Kline and Jackson Pollock - and Pollock particularly for his methodology of "painting as performance".

Often leaving his canvas on the ground - as Pollock did - Smibert uses a broom as a giant brush and other implements to paint many of his large-scale works in an extension of the brush as "part of the body" and a movement itself.

His art reflects three great traditions: the Golden Age of British Watercolour between 1750 and 1850, Zen minimalism and Abstract Expressionism like Pollock's.

For the past 10 years, he has worked on primarily large-scale, monochrome acrylic wash landscapes on canvas, a portion of which were displayed at QVMAG in a last year's solo exhibition, Tao Sublime, the Art of Tony Smibert.

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The pieces are not so much landscapes as evocations of landscapes; taking the medium "back to its bare essence" as if it were painting as a form of haiku. There is little precedent for his style anywhere in art.

"It is sometimes about saying as much as you can with as few marks as possible," he said.

"But sometimes, when I'm painting this sort of thing, [the Tao Sublime works], I start with lots of abstract marks and the landscape appears.

Smibert's later work encapsulates a Japanese philosophy, too, Ten Chi Jin - heaven, earth and man.

"It effectively means that we live within eternity, for the space of a lifetime experienced in moments," he said.

In this moment of a lifetime, recognition for Smibert's work is seemingly ever-growing and perhaps, if heaven be willing, it will earn a place in eternity.

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