Dunmoochin

Simon Pierse recently spent five months as artist in residence at Dunmoochin, former residence of Australian artist Clifton Pugh (1924–1990). Living with his family in Phoenix 1, one of two new studio accommodations built of the site of Pugh's original mud brick house (destroyed by fire in 2001), Simon painted outside in the landscape between October 2007 and January 2008. The entrance gate, one of the few surviving remnants of Pugh's original home, itself reclaimed salvage from an old house in Melbourne, is the subject of two of these paintings, whilst the Black Dam (also known as the Dark Dam), is a subject previously painted many times by Pugh himself, to whom it had great significance, being amongst other things, his only source of water during his first months at Dunmoochin.

Dunmoochin Gallery