Moonlight Quarry

Like many of his landscapes made in the late 1980s, Moonlight Quarry is a masterful exploration of the relationships between the elements of the scene: land, sky, rocks, scrub and water.

Hodnett achieves a remarkable unity through his use of colour, which, at first, appears MONOCHROME in the rocks that dominate the picture plane. On closer examination, however, one sees the rich palette and layering that give the picture its density and texture.

The water in the hole in the foreground is connected, through its colour, with the sky, but it also opens up a space, at the heart of the painting, into a subterranean world that seems always to be present in Hodnett’s work, even when he is looking at surfaces. 

Artwork courtesy of Pretoria Art Museum.