Robert Juniper (b.1929-2012) was born in Merredin on Njaki Njaki Nyoongar Country in Western Australia. He studied in England before returning to Australia to begin his career as an art teacher and landscape artist. Juniper’s creative practice spanned painting, printmaking, illustration, and sculpture, and he is best known for his evocative and expansive depictions of the West Australian landscape. Juniper’s works often take an aerial perspective of place, and introduce figurative and decorative elements – his sprawling compositions embrace the enormity of the West Australian landscape, depicting its layers, rhythms, contrasting colours, and the harmony he felt working within it.¹

Juniper’s North West Landscape embodies an intuitive and personal appreciation of Western Australia’s expansive landscape. Juniper’s soft purple hues sweep across the picture plane, the separation between the body of water in the foreground and the vast sky in the background only made clear by the subtle yellow-green organic line that indicates the water’s edge. Overlaid across the landscape are a series of gestural markings that initiate a high point of view and instil place with both movement and life – ripples in the water, a series of figures exploring the Country in the distance, and a sparse grouping of tall trees that stretch up toward the sky – all invoking notions of ‘the known and unknowability’² of and within the landscape, beyond the horizon line.

1. Greenhill Galleries, “Robert Juniper,” accessed December 15, 2020, http://www.greenhillgalleries.com/exhibitions/exhibition_details_juniper.html.
2. Christopher Crouch, “Robert Juniper,” Artlink, published December 1999, https://www.artlink.com.au/articles/79/robert-juniper/.