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December 16, 2011
James Montgomery Cant was a South Australian modernist and surrealist who painted the local landscape of the Fleurieu Peninsula in the 1950s and 1960s. The Art Gallery of South Australia holds a large number of dried grasses paintings, but these are not online.
James Cant, The Fig Trees, 1932, oil on canvas on board
I find the dry grasses and scrub series he painted between 1958 and early 1962 around the Willunga and Aldinga area of the Fleurieu Peninsula intriguing.
James Cant, wire grass, Oil and encaustic on board, circa 1962
The highly textured paintings of dry grasses, dead branches and brambles are close to abstract expressionism and are full of light; yet they are perceived to be old fashioned and are usually relegated to the storerooms of art galleries.
James Can, Landscape, Oil and encaustic on hardboard, circa 1961
The series finished around the mid-1960s when Cant was confined to a wheelchair because of advancing multiple sclerosis and by the 1970s he could no longer paint.
This individual body has influenced my approach to photographing the land in Fleurieu Peninsula.
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