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Stephen Bush born 1955 POMME DE TERRE #5, 1999 oil on linen SIGNED signed, dated and inscribed versoon stretcher: Stephen Bush 1999 #5 DIMENSIONS 79.0 x 119.5 cm PROVENANCE The John L. Stewart Collection, New York,purchased directly from the artist, c1999 ESSAY One could argue that Stephen Bush's paintings hover on the brink ofobsession. Fascinated by unusual characters and objects, Bush haspainted and repainted certain images, people, and things over decades,as if haunted by them. We have seen this with the repetition of theelephant, the caretaker, the explorer, and the tractor in his work, amongother creatures. Why does Bush persistently resurrect his characters, orpaint the same scene time and time again? In the opinion of Americancurator Liza Statton, the repetition 'speaks to the physical and emotionalrigors of the painting process' and 'Bush's pure, unadulterated manuallabour.'1 Perhaps this dedication also indicates the artist's desire to getat some elusive truth lurking within the painting, something which is notso easily accessible (to viewer or artist) at first glance. One such motif that has captured Bush's fascination since his earliestwork is the potato. This fixation may be a result of the artist's ownagricultural background, growing up on a farm outside Colac, Victoria,and his long-term interest in humans' cultivation and exploitation ofnature. In Bush's Venetian Red series there is a painting entitled PotatoArt Museum (venetian red), 1993, in which the walls of a museum arecuriously lined with images of potatoes. Several similar works followed,including Potato Museum, 1995, which also depicts a museum interior,at the centre of which sits a painting of three potatoes, ironically anotherwork by Bush humorously named This Year's New Pontiacs. Bush's mysterious 1997-99 series Pomme De Terre is perhaps a moreabstract rendering of the potato. This series evolved from the artist's1996 residency at Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, where eachday for the course of the residency he drew and then ate a potato. Atthe conclusion of the residency he threw all his potato drawings into agreen wheelie bin, and this became the basis of this ambiguous series ofpaintings. As the audience, we are privy to none of this back-story, andthus we see no more than the tactile shape and colour of the rubbishbins. In this way, Bush demonstrates his concerns about post-colonialhistorical and landscape painting. That is; there is more, far more, tounderstanding history, then what we can tell from a picture. 1. Statton, L., 'No consolation prizes', in Stephen Bush: Gelderland, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe,New Mexico, 2007 exhibition catalogue LEAH CROSSMAN