Even Emmanuel Kant, an eighteenth century philosopher, who argued that the mind was the prime organizing force in understanding our world, was somewhat challenged by the sublime, which he conceded was inexplicable in rational terms.
But painter John Olsen speaks and paints fluently of his encounters with the sublime, such as in his Lake Eyre series.
In our interview at his studio, he spoke passionately about that experience of flying over Lake Eyre last year which because of the Queensland floods had turned into a ‘vast inland sea… I could not see the horizon due to the vastness of the waters. There were seagulls and thousands of pelicans and I discovered later fish brought down by the rivers became part of its living creatures’.
