Fred
Williams was afraid of the bush, I was told once. I’ve never known what to make
of this ‘interesting fact’. Is it even true? Did he leave his Hawthorn home
every month to overcome fear? Why spend a lifetime painting landscapes you’re afraid
of? A Prahran art student painted Fred Williams pizza. A disc of black blobs
and red straggles resembled an overladen Napoletana. This pizza was not
amusing. I liked Williams. He showed me new understandings of micro fern and
macro ranges. His eye spent years in beatitude examining January wreck of
bushfire, July hint of early wattle.
