Exhibition Montsalvat

Heartland presents seventeen oil landscapes painted by David McLeod over a three-year period, reflecting the diverse natural environments of Victoria, NSW and Southern Queensland. 

David McLeod Artist

In 2025, I have embarked on portraying my own version of the Australian landscape based on my wife and her family’s experiences growing up and my own boyhood memories. 

‘The Drop’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 84 x 113cm

A lot of work went into the painting and proved to be major struggle. I had to take a lot of detail out of this composition to make it work... A less is more approach.

What I achieved was the spectacular drop off the sheer mountain face, to the patchwork of dense bush and cleared areas of land below.

Based on the scenery around Mt.Buffalo in Victoria’s high country, it took me six months to make it work.

‘Mountain Valley’

(2019) 

Oil on canvas. 84 x 113 cm

An impressionistic throw down of tones and energetic brushwork.

I was pleased with the variety of contrasting blues of the mountain terrains, which gave it added depth.

Based on a montage of different scenery captured around the Black Spur on the Great Divide to Melbourne’s north east.

‘Northern Light’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 61 x 61 cm

A harbour scene captured during the stillness of winter in the northern arctic town of Brensholmen in Norway.

I visited the area which is on the coast west of Tromso, several years ago. This image stayed with me and it compels me to go back and visit again. 

‘Thunderhead Cloud’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 71 x 71 cm

In this painting I concentrated on capturing a dramatic sky that dominates a landscape. The sky was based on stormy skies I saw around the Golden Plains thatare to the south west of Ballarat.

The imagery in this painting is constructed from several sites around Victoria and was influenced by French impressionist paintings of skies and reflected skies in water.

‘View Towards Blue Hills’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 87 x 107 cm

Painted in the ranges around Mount Tamborine in the Gold Coast Hinterland. I pushed the space around the sky and distant hills back using a variety of shapes in cool blues and violets and more intensive greens, blues and greys in the foreground to create the hill forms and cliffs.

The entire painting captured the essence of the place which had a laid back timeless quality about it.

‘Escarpment’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 97 x 102 cm

This painting was based on a variety of different scenes photographed and sketched of the countryside behind the township of Mudgeeraba in the Gold Coast hinterland.

The composition was put together as a sort of montage, which is often how I work. The sky is a luminous warm grey which created a slight haze over the lush hills in the foreground. 

‘River Bank’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 91 x 102 cm

The river I used for this work was the Yarra, where it flows across the Yarra Valley in
Melbourne’s outer suburb of Wonga Park.

I exaggerated the river’s width by enlarging it so as to give it some power and presence, while capturing its clarity and hidden depths.

The trees along the bank here are enormous and I painted them as clearly and truthfully as I saw them. 

‘Edge of the Tilt’

(2024)

Oil on canvas. 76 x 76 cm

A study in creating a symmetry or asymmetry of both an old holden car and a group of cattle. The sky looms behind with some foreboding, but it is contrasted by the charged greens of both the car and the landscape.

The painting is based on the border land north of Echuca and the Murray, with the ‘Tilt’ being a seismic ridge , the Cadell Fault, that runs northward from the Murray and has impacted the course of the river. 

‘South Gundagai Country’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 102 x 102 cm

The area my mother grew up in. Several kilometres to the south of Gundagai, in and around the Murrumbidgee River valleys and the tiny township of Tumblong.

The painting is in a square format, so as to capture the pile up of farmed hills that form the foothills of the Snowy Mountains.

The warm sandy and ochre colours of these hills are painted in loose but subtle way.

‘River Wharfe’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 72 x 84 cm

With this painting I wanted to capture the Georges River in southern Sydney, which formed the backdrop of my growing up in Lugarno. The river was the dividing line between the southern edge of the suburban sprawl and a dense bushland that very few people lived in at that time.

I chose the image of a sun drenched pier with sheds to contrast against the dark impenetrable tangle of trees that made up the southern bank. The painting captures a sort of dazed timelessness. 

‘‘The Island’

(2024)

Oil on canvas. 84 x 102 cm

The Yarra River near Warrandyte in Victoria, has always drawn artists to its banks. I juxtaposed a ragged sand island against an imposing river bank escarpment.

The painting tries to capture many things but this seems to energise the composition.

‘Pink Riverbend’

(2024)

Oil on canvas. 71 x 84 cm

Another impressionistic work that was painted quite quickly.

It was a sunset landscape that I tried to capture.

The Merri Creek in Melbourne’s north is near my house and I have often tried to paint it in its many moods and guises.

‘Rainforest Creek Bridge’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 92 x 102 cm

I love painting rainforest against structures such as houses and bridges.

Once again, this painting tries to capture many things. All of the complexity of tree branches, entangled grass, meandering river banks and the powerful structural arms of the bridge, create a dense and pleasing composition.  

‘Bend In the River’

(2024)

Oil on canvas. 84 x92 cm

The Campaspe River gliding toward its junction with the Murray. I caught sight of this scene on a glorious summer’s morning.

The river’s surface blazed intense blues and ochre’s which I sought to express in paint. Not an easy task as the painting took me over six months to complete before I could get it right.

‘The Hidden Bridge’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 84 x 84 cm

An attempt to capture flat low coastal plains in the style of the Dutch masters of landscape such as Meindert.

The actual landscape is of the typical Dutch farming country around the town of Abcoude in Holland, which I visited earlier this year.  

 ‘Remote Plateau’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 84 x 91 cm

I struggled with this landscape for eighteen months. The problematic sky would not sit with the landscape effectively.

I left it for six months and when looking at it again with fresh eyes, I had to settle the picture with a leaden quality of sky, This seemed to anchor and stabilise the composition. This gave it a composure which evoked feelings of isolation and melancholy. 

‘The Basin’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 84 x 92 cm

This painting relies on the horizontal movement of line, colour and shapes to capture the widening yellow plains of the western districts farmlands around Camperdown in Victoria.

The emerald blue of the lake symbolises the old volcanic landform of sinkholes and ancient worn down hills.

‘Hinterland’

(2025)

Oil on canvas. 91 x 112 cm

I have tried to capture the plains on the other side of the mountains around Mt
Tamborine, as a series of parallel horizontal linear movements.

It seems to have captured the vastness and depth of the plain effectively.