Why I Paint Australian Landscapes from Memory
When I begin a painting, I rarely try to recreate one particular view exactly as I saw it. Instead, I return to the feeling a place left behind: the openness of a distant horizon, a winding path disappearing between hills, the movement of water, or a sudden meeting of colours in the landscape.
My Australian abstract landscape paintings are shaped by these fragments of memory. They are not maps of recognisable locations. They are emotional landscapes, built from the places I have seen, the places I miss and the places that continue to live within me.
The landscapes we carry within us
I migrated from India to Australia in 2012. Starting life in a new country was exciting, but it was also difficult. I was far from family, surrounded by unfamiliar places and trying to understand where I belonged.
There were periods of loneliness and emotional struggle. During that time, painting became more than a creative practice. It became a quiet way of returning to myself. Through colour and mark-making, I could express feelings that were difficult to explain in words.
Over time, Australia began to feel like home. Its open skies, changing light, coastlines, waterways and wide stretches of land entered my visual memory. Yet the colour, warmth and emotional richness of my Indian roots remained with me. When I paint, these two worlds do not feel separate. They meet naturally on the canvas.
Between India and Australia
India shaped my early relationship with colour. Colour was never simply decorative; it carried celebration, spirituality, energy and emotion. Australia gave me a different visual language: spacious horizons, quieter earth tones, unexpected bursts of wild colour and a powerful sense of distance.
In my paintings, these influences come together intuitively. A deep red or glowing pink may sit beside ochre, green or blue. A gestural line may suggest a road, a river or a boundary between one memory and another. Small marks may become trees, fields or signs of life seen from far away.
I am not trying to choose between my past and present. Painting allows both to exist together. Each canvas becomes a place where memory, migration and belonging can meet.
Why I paint from memory
Memory changes a place. It softens some details, strengthens others and holds onto emotion more faithfully than geography.
When I work from memory, I am free to move beyond what a landscape looks like and explore what it felt like. A hill can become a sweep of colour. A river can become a line that guides the eye through the painting. A familiar path can become a symbol of uncertainty, hope or finding one’s way home.
This is why abstraction feels natural to me. It leaves space for intuition and allows the painting to evolve without being tied to a literal scene. I build layers, cover sections, redraw lines and respond to what appears. Some decisions are deliberate; others arrive unexpectedly. The process reflects memory itself: incomplete, shifting and deeply personal.
Colour as a form of optimism
Colour is central to my work because, for me, it represents optimism. Even when a painting begins with uncertainty or longing, colour gives it energy and possibility.
I often use vivid pinks, blues, greens, yellows and earthy reds. These colours do not describe the Australian landscape literally. They express my emotional response to it. They allow the land to feel joyful, mysterious, comforting or full of movement.
Painting with colour helped me move through difficult periods in my life, and I hope that sense of hope remains present in the finished artwork. I want each painting to bring warmth and life into a space without telling the viewer exactly what to feel.
An invitation to find your own landscape
One of the things I love most about abstraction is that every viewer sees something different. Someone may recognise a valley, while another sees a coastline, a garden or a place from childhood. The same colours and marks can awaken entirely different memories.
I do not need viewers to see the landscape I carried while painting. I want them to discover their own.
Beauty is subjective, and our emotional connection to a place is uniquely personal. A painting becomes meaningful when it creates a pause, invites curiosity or reminds someone of a feeling they had almost forgotten.
A landscape can hold more than one home 
My paintings continue to explore the space between where I came from and where I am now. They carry traces of India, memories of Australia and the emotional journey of building a life between cultures.
Every painting holds something of my inner world, but once it is finished, it is no longer mine alone. It becomes an open landscape where another person can bring their own memories, hopes and sense of home.
That is why I paint Australian landscapes from memory: not to preserve a place exactly as it was, but to honour how it continues to live within us.
Explore my available original abstract landscape paintings, created in Melbourne and inspired by land, memory and emotion.