MYLES YOUNG | NOTES ON GROWTH

Notes on Growth

During his teenage years, Myles Young spent many hours gazing from the windows of the school bus while travelling from his parents’ Byron Bay home through the lush environs of the Northern Rivers hinterland. The son of two creaBve parents, Young also spent Bme combing through their library of art books, paying special aDenBon to European art history. Shaped by both these influences and working from hundreds of marker-pen sketches, the fourteen painBngs in “Notes on Growth” are solely the product of the arBst’s imaginaBon.

Young suggests that his painBngs consider “endless iteraBons of growth over Bme, perhaps in the same locaBon and ecosystem.” In these imaginary landscapes brimming with Bmeless trees and otherworldly plants set in watery surrounds, it’s hard to know whether we’re witnessing scenes from the future or the past. However, their dynamic character and enigmaBc qualiBes lend weight to the idea that they exist in a state of flux.

Each painBng explores one or more ideas while remaining open to the viewer’s interpretaBon. The First Sunflower on Earth is Young’s aDempt to capture the moment when sunlight first appeared. Although Vincent Van Gogh is said to have claimed that “the sunflower is mine”, many arBsts have followed suit in depicBng this ancient and pracBcal bloom. Heralded by three moons, and aided by eye-catching brushwork, a vibrant theatrical spectacle plays out as a sunflower is caressed by the sun’s warmth.

Ancient Blossom conBnues Young’s foray into the natural world. Orchids were historically used in Chinese painBng for their alluring, exoBc qualiBes. In this case an orchid, which appears at the top of the frame, unexpectedly emerges from a bright green pilea peperomioides, or Chinese Money Plant – not its natural host. PosiBoned alongside a large watercourse, this unusual twosome dominates the image and unveils a delighWully confounding scene.

In Fern Harvest Young has turned his aDenBon to rendering labour. Set in a verdant landscape, a seemingly everyday scene depicts a gardener calmly tending to ferns. A trolley system, carrying plants in buckets, travels overhead as a sleek white cat stalks something just beyond the frame. Young says he’s wanted to paint this loaded composiBon for a long Bme, “I spend a lot of Bme thinking about other people’s jobs and what they do all day. I am constantly curious about work and my work as a painter”.

The ethereal dreamscapes and fantasBc flowers in “Notes on Growth” introduce a myriad of possibiliBes. Against a backdrop of global challenges like climate change, habitat reducBon and biodiversity loss, Young’s artworks prompt us to ponder the natural environment that surrounds us.