Kew Billabong I 1975

  

oil on canvas 96.0 x 96.0 cm

    
      Williams had not exhibited in Melbourne for several years, and had since been thoroughly engaged in a personal regeneration of his art and the concerns which informed it. The most dramatic change was his transition from an earthy palette, dominated by sombre tones, to a new rainbow palette, in which colour was given free play on the painting surface, rather than existing as underpainting revealed behind the surface, but never immediately expressed. The Kew Billabong works are strongly impressionist in feel and bear a particular allegiance to Monet's Waterlilies series, demonstrating a more intimate connection with the landscape than is evident in Williams' earlier landscape works, where dispassionate observation was the artist's key.    
             

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