Big Skies

Michael Donnelly

14 sept–1 oct 2023

Michael Donnelly’s oil pastels create intimate glimpses of the East Gippsland skies sailing over Gunaikurnai lands–varied and vast.

Michael Donnelly’s artworks were commenced in 2021 and based on photographs taken between 2019- 2023. Blue skies and high cirrus, storm clouds, fair-weather cumulus, sunrises and sunsets, curtains of rain and bursts of sunshine all appear. Included with these, significantly for the special Bushfire Recovery initiative of the Lemon Hill Gallery where they were first shown, are a handful of smoke-filled skies from the Black Summer fires.

“In my house you’ll dwell forever / You shall not want for care.
Surely goodness and mercy will follow you / Come and meet me in the middle of the air,
I will meet you in the middle of the air.”

‘Meet me in the Middle of the Air’–Paul Kelly. Based on Psalm 23 and 1 Thessalonians 4:17-18.

Michael Donnelly is a Melbourne/East Gippsland-based artist, working in Ashwood on the lands of the Wurundjeri people and Lake Tyers Beach on lands of the Gunai Kurnai peoples. Michael's
artmaking is in oils, oil pastels, printmaking, drawing, and ephemeral collage works, in a figurative, narrative-based style that touches on religious themes, landscapes, and the human condition.