Trevor Hyde - Landscape Paintings

Born in Auckland, New Zealand, Trevor Hyde moved to Sydney with his young family during Easter, 1973. Since then he has maintained a professional career as a commercial artist in parallel with his painting.

His Graphic Design Studio, Silver Bullet, became renowned for high-end brand identification designing for iconic Australian companies like Bonds and the luxury boat company Riviera. With his painting he has had a number of studio exhibitions as well as showing at Artigiano Gallery in Auckland and Rushcutter’s Bay Gallery in Sydney.

Although he has lived many years in Australia his paintings reflect the strong influence of growing up in the NZ landscape. More recently he has explored the symbols that reflect his spiritual life as a Buddhist, with his bare, almost abstract hills, graced by prayer flags. He has also become interested in iconic tourist landmarks like Observatory Hill in Sydney, subject matter that sees him combining his love of perspective and space with minutely painted personages enjoying their moment in the outdoors.

Trevor Hyde Interview

Although you have lived in Australia for most of your professional life your paintings draw very much from the New Zealand landscape tradition. Whereas in Australia it is the bush that interests artists, in New Zealand it seems to be the starkness and the very geomorphology of the landscape that becomes the subject. If you look at Colin Mcahon’s Northland landscapes for example he renders the landscape in severe abstract terms where the hills become this solid mass set against a liquid, pulsating sky. In your own work you seem to be looking at the geomorphology also, as if trying to get to the very bones of the landscape. What is it about the landscape, what is it that really gets under your skin?

In New Zealand so much of the land has been severely cleared for sheep and dairy farming exposing the shapes beneath. The sky seems to become more exposed also. Because NZ is a volcanic country the formations or land shapes are more extreme in the way the hills blend in and out of each other. The light plays against this; changing the shadows all the time. I remember being struck by this change of light when driving through the country on family road trips. It’s really the light that interests me most, though I find the landforms hold a kind of mysterious quality for me. The hills seem to never end when you are a child. Climbing up to see what’s on the other side one just comes to yet another rolling hill. One is struck by how big the land is compared to oneself.

Yes, the sense of scale that one experiences as a child is something that stays with us all our lives. In fact a lot of conscious thought about scale has gone into your paintings it seems. Is the wide-angle view that you introduce into your pictures a way of enlarging the scene to panoramic proportions?

I am not so much interested in single details of things. I like placing things in the context of a wider landscape. When I stand in a landscape I might be drawn to look at one thing but I’m also aware of what’s happening either side.

With the smaller things, like the people that are starting to inhabit your landscapes, where do they fit into the scheme of things? Are they just adding extra interest or do you see them as little flashing indicators of human existence set within the greater design plan of nature?

I am interested in how people use the landscape. I am fascinated by the fact that as an observer you are not involved in what they are doing and that they just appear in the landscape and then disappear.

How important is the sense of place for you? Do you need to identify strongly with a particular place before you can paint it? Do you have a preference for any particular atmospheric or light condition?

Up until now a 'sense of place' has been very important to me. A place that I have some sort of identification with - and that is often dependent on the way the shapes and light of that place are affecting me.

I do have to identify with a place and if there is something the places I want to paint have in common it is a kind of meditative quality that attracts me. This comes from spaciousness, stillness and the light that pulls or pushes things to the foreground - typically early morning or late afternoon.