On a summer holiday in Peregian in December 1982 to January 1983, I worked on this sequence of decalcomanias using collage to enhance the suggestions I discovered in the random dispositions of the pigment. To convert it to a landscape I applied a film of black or coloured tissue papers, often in layers, and I competed the transformation by adding a further collage of images as extensions of the implications provided by the paint.
So wrote James Gleeson in the foreword to the twenty-two works made at Peregian Beach in Queensland which were later bound into a volume titled Peregian Codex. It was a vital moment for Gleeson the artist. He had decided to give up his public commitments as visiting curator, lecturer and author and to devote himself totally to painting. Home from his annual holiday, Gleeson set out on his great series of late works of which Reef painted in 1983 is the first. The Author Lou Klepac emigrated to Australia in 1950 and was educated at Perth Modern School and the University of Western Australia. He was Curator of Paintings at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and at the Art Gallery of South Australia. He rejoined Art Gallery of Western Australia in 1974 where he was Senior Curator and then Deputy Director (1974-80). Among the many exhibitions he has curated are Sickert paintings (1986) contemporary Drawing (1977) and Giorgio Morandi paintings and etchings (1977). Among the books he has published are Russell Drysdale, 1983, Australian Painters of the 20th Century, 2000William Robinson, 2001, John Coburn, 2003, Jeffrey Smart, 2005 and Rick Amor, 2008.
