New paintings by Melbourne contemporary artist
I don't paint to just make pictures; I paint to tell stories and to draw attention to important issues
About Russell Shiells
The stories
The subjects of my new paintings can be confronting. They include the poor, the disadvantaged, refugees and asylum seekers, dispossession, emigration and immigration, the Scottish clearances, the tragedy of child abuse, and the devastating outcomes of colonisation in our country. These subjects can move people strongly, provoking discussion and further exploration.
I have a particular interest in history, and how it shapes the present. My personal stories include places I have been, people I have known and my family history, principally Scottish. Commissions have included the personal stories of others.
Using my skills in drawing, photography and computer graphics, I gather images and ideas to experiment with various compositions and colours. I make contemporary art, working in mixed media, but mainly with acrylic on linen.
I am an artist who enjoys being involved in the whole process, from extensive research into personal or cultural history, to stretching the linen, making drawings and studies, and making the frames. A new painting may take several months to complete.
The Strathnaver Clearances, Scotland 1819
2024, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1525W x 1020H
This painting connects with our Scottish ancestry and refers to a particularly inhumane “Clearance”at Strathnaver, on the north coast of Scotland, in 1819, when around a thousand people were brutally evicted from their ancestral homes. With only half an hour’s warning their cottages were ruthlessly set on fire – it became known as the Year of the Burnings. No-one was spared, even the old and infirm, and some died in the fires. This was all done so the gentry could graze sheep and increase their profits. Sham trials exonerated the culprits.
Many of these destitute Scots emigrated to Canada and Australia. The McKenzie side of my wife’s family were also displaced in the Clearances on the isle of Skye in 1852. Angus, his wife and seven children sailed on the Georgiana, and first settled at Armstrong Creek, south of Geelong.
Sadly, man’s inhumanity to man continues to this day.
Port Philip Bay, Melbourne
2024, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1524W x 1120H
For thousands of years, what is now known as Melbourne was Naarm, where small streams flowed across a fertile plain. This area was home to the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung Peoples of the Eastern Kulin nation. Kangaroos and emus roamed freely, and the shores were rich with seafood.
With colonisation came trade, so the Yarra River was dredged to allow ships up into the city. Goods were taxed at the first Customs House built in 1841. The later 1876 Customs House is now the Immigration Museum on Flinders Street.
Much history lies now under the city and below the silt in the Yarra River bed.
They Fought For Their Country
2024, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
860W x 1015H
Who do we want to remember, who would we rather forget? Who do we immortalise in statues?
Statues around the country revere white explorers and politicians. Here in Victoria on Bunurong and Gunaikurnai country, the explorer Angus McMillan was the perpetrator of several massacres of indigenous groups. Despite this, nineteen monuments honouring him exist in Gippsland, and the local Council voted against removing them in June 2020.
In contrast the brave indigenous warriors, who fought for the survival of their people in the Australian Frontier Wars, are largely ignored.
“There were at least 270 frontier massacres over 140 years, as part of a state-sanctioned and organised attempt to eradicate Aboriginal people.” (The Guardian, 2019).
The 1917 White Soldier Settlement Scheme
2024, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1680W x 1070H
Did you know that more than a thousand indigenous soldiers fought in the First World War? And that when, in 1917, the Australian government set up the Soldier Settlement Scheme for returned soldiers it excluded these indigenous soldiers?
Anzac Day sparked my curiosity about this injustice and as I read the history, I was moved to tell this story. I wanted the message to be emphatic: Lest We Forget!
Colonial times in Australia, past and present
2023, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1524W x 1120H
Colonialism continues to this day.
From the time the British claimed this land, our First Peoples were dispossessed.
Their land and children were taken from them, their language and culture suppressed. Indigenous people have much shorter lifespans, higher incarceration rates and higher youth suicide rates than the rest of the Australian population. Intergenerational disadvantage persists.
Due to the missions banning languages, and the stolen generations of children, over half of the more than 250 Aboriginal languages are now dormant.
That is how cultures are erased. Other languages can convey concepts that we have no words for. Knowledge is lost when language is lost. Of those remaining, only 46 languages have 100 or more speakers. I thought it important to include those 46 in the painting. They are laid over now unspoken languages.
The kangaroo and the emu represent our Indigenous people who were driven off their land, and were massacred, poisoned or imprisoned if they fought back, or even speared a cow or sheep for food. Far from their traditional country, they were often starving.
Neck chains were still being used on Aboriginal people as recently as 1958 at Halls Creek in the Kimberley.
The woman from Seurat's painting Ile de la Grande Jatte represents European colonial settlement. The clock, the ship and the plane remind us that this colonial exploitation continues, from the past to the present. It is a very contemporary painting.
Not In My Backyard – Past, Present and Future
2024, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1680W x 1070H
Last Christmas I was looking out on our back garden, thinking about how much the country has changed since kangaroos roamed here. And how huge houses are now replacing the treed gardens and smaller homes of the post war years. My wife had suggested a pleasant garden scene, however a very different painting evolved.
The scene moves across time, past, present and future… the clock has no hands.
History comes alive beyond the windows. My citrus trees and flowers become the original trees and native grasses, dotted with Murnongs, native yams. Wurundjeri hunters pursue kangaroos and emus. Behind the back fence a new monolith arises on land stripped of trees. It is one of many, surrounded by paving dotted with small shrubs.
Inside the room the tartan couch and the Maclean crest on the wall acknowledge British colonisation of this country, and my own Scottish heritage. A Scotch whisky sits on the table, a wee dram to celebrate the festive season. The cards suggest the way many Australians now see Christmas, a time of indulgence.
However, the words on the edge of the table invite us to give in the name of goodwill, love and justice. To pay the rent.
The Whale Watchers
2022, contemporary art, acrylic on linen,
1530W x 1020H
Whale watching is a popular activity, gazing out on the ocean. But here the watchers fail to see the whales and other creatures beside them, carved into the rocks. All over our country are precious records of over sixty thousand years of occupation, ignored, built over and blown up by miners and roadbuilders.
The Scottish Immigrant
2023, contemporary art, acrylic and toner on linen,
1015W x 1375H
The spiritual heart of this country is an alien environment to the new immigrant, desert country, a place where ancient Uluru stands majestically over a strange land. There is a disconnect between the old and new inhabitants exemplified in their relationship with the land: the old inhabitants belonged to the land, the immigrants believed the land belonged to them.
The stern, industrious immigrant from Scotland, my great great grandfather, is quite out of place here, a foreigner in a foreign land. He has come to this country with his tools of trade in his sea trunk. Caledonian Games, music, art, customs, dress sense, religion and sensibility are all imported with him too.
He treasures his memories of Scotland, but he will he will never see his native country, his homeland, again.
Reconciliation
2022, acrylic on canvas,
800W x 1050H
This work speaks to the themes of hope and reconciliation. It draws on Australian Aboriginal and European cultures, art history, and the Christian tradition.
The fish on a plate, and bread in a woven basket, bring together these cultures and symbolise sharing. The black and white chairs at the table invite people to come together.
Last Stand at Budj Bim
2021, acrylic on linen,
1570W x 940H
When the British first arrived in Australia they laid claim to the entire land in the name of the Crown. Vast tracts of land, suitable for grazing, were stolen from its Indigenous custodians.
Near Budj Bim in Western Victoria, the Aboriginal peoples fled or were massacred and their land was carved up for white settlers, sheep and cattle.
Brighton Baths Reimagined
Triptych, 2019, acrylic on canvas
1650W x 840H
This view from the Baths Restaurant reminds us of precolonial history. There is Tommy McRae's Corroboree on the beach, a fish in a Indigenous style on the plate, and further out yacht masts transform into totem poles. The figures of Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe represent the European settlement of Brighton.
Refugees
2017, acrylic on linen,
1220W x 915H
Two fleets of friendly rubber ducks, cute and playful, each group led by a white duck, come together on the sea. An endless stream of flimsy paper boats make their way across the deep blue ocean.
Reacting to the painting, someone commented, “At last, you’ve painted something amusing”.
Did they realise what lies in the water below the surface?
Glenn Loughrey, Wiradjuri Artist
Am I black or white enough?
2023, acrylic on linen
1370W x 1117H
Reverend Canon Associate Professor Uncle Glenn Loughrey: Elder, artist, writer, family man, advocate for the Voice. Like many First Peoples, he has lighter skin. The handprints represent disrupted history.
He invites us to reconciliation. Glenn answers racism with courage, patience and love.
Gippsland Farmstay
2023, acrylic and toner on linen,
1050W x 1410H
The Bed and Breakfast treats its guests to a delightful breakfast reminiscent of European culture. Scottish cattle graze on the hills. White settlers have occupied this place for the last hundred and fifty years, but this is also Gunaikurnai country, and their spirits remain here.
Portraits
The Hungarian Immigrant
2012, acrylic and toner on linen,
760W x 1020H
This work tells a poignant story common to many European migrants after the Second World War. Anna’s Hungarian mother escaped her Communist homeland and fled to Australia with her other daughter, leaving Anna behind with her great aunt. Anna migrated on her own to Australia as a young adult. She came with this small suitcase, her red baby dress made by her mother, her brush and mirror, and a treasured farewell message.
Robert Young, great grandfather
2012, acrylic and toner on canvas
760W x 1020H
Robert emigrated from Burntisland in Scotland to Australia on the Bann in 1882, and settled in Brighton, Victoria. He married and had three daughters, one of whom was my grandmother, Violet Young.
Robert was a joiner. He speaks to me across the years through his well-worn tools, which I now enjoy using. His tools connect me to him.
My own tools, my drill and my paintbrushes, frame my signature.
Violet Young and William Methven
2012, acrylic and toner on canvas,
760W x 1020H
A love story. My Scottish grandfather left Melbourne in 1915 to fight in the First World War.
William was with Australian, Canadian and French soldiers at the International Post in the front-line at Villers-Bretonneux, France. In his pocket was this photo of Violet, his future wife who crocheted the blanket.
The Scottish Mailman
2014, acrylic and toner on canvas,
1015W x 760H
Against the backdrop of William Barak’s Corroboree here is the Scottish immigrant who arrived in Melbourne in 1852. By 1856 he was the mailman to Port Albert.
Gippsland had an estimated Aboriginal population of about 4,000 in 1840. By the 1860s, those who survived massacres and disease were vastly outnumbered by the white population.
Elisabeth’s Babcia
2012, acrylic & toner on canvas,
760W x 1015H
Elisabeth Launay-Dolet is a French poet. Her mother was an orphan, her father left when she was a child. All she knew of any other family was that her grandmother was a Polish migrant worker in 1926. Some of her best known poems relate to her search for her grandmother, her Polish babcia. In 2022 Elisabeth finally found her family.
The Scots and the Sheep: Emigration / Immigration
The Highland Clearances
2019, acrylic on linen, 1225W x 925H
This landscape connects the Highland Clearances in Scotland, which occurred from the 1770’s to the 1850’s, to the clearing of Aboriginal peoples in Australia.
There are many parallels in these clearances; the landowners wanted the land for farming, and in both countries destroyed homes and drove out the original inhabitants. The victims in both Scotland and Australiaia were often dismissed as primitive, uncultured, lazy and dangerous.
Ironically, many of the perpetrators in Australia had suffered from the Highland Clearances themselves.
The Invasion of the Sheep
Hobsons Bay, 1852
2022, acrylic and toner on linen,
1525W x 910H
By the end of 1852, 90,000 immigrants had arrived in Victoria, in search of gold or just a better life. Many were desperately poor Scots who had been forced from their villages by large landowners in the Highland Clearances.
Hobsons Bay, in Victoria, was filled with discarded wooden sailing ships which had carried both immigrants and sheep to Australia. During a single week in March 1853, a staggering 138 vessels anchored in the bay.
At the same time vast tracts of Australia were being turned into farmland, and tens of thousands of sheep sent to the colonies. So the sheep came marching in, a vast army that would eventually occupy the country. The curious inhabitants looked on, unsuspecting.
As Shane Howard sings in Solid Rock :
You’re standin’ on solid rock
Standin’ on sacred ground
You’re livin’ on borrowed time
And the winds of change
Are blowin’ down the line
The sheep proved to be a vital part of the fledgling colonial economy and brought prosperity to the white settlers. It is said Australia was ‘built on the sheep’s back’ and it began in 1796 with John Macarthur’s importation of sheep to New South Wales. There was, however, a cost and the cost was, and is, being borne by the Indigenous people, the custodians of the land, still.
Tarra-Bulga landscape
2021, acrylic on linen, 1010W x 760H
By the 1850s the land was already being divided up by settlers. The immigrants’ lands were often purchased in England before they came.
Still in highland dress, the Scotsman is standing confidently, long rifle in his hand, guarding his little plot and his Scottish highland sheep. The rifle ensures his dominance. As I am a descendant of the Maclean Clan I have dressed him in my clan tartan.
Hidden in the forest you can find the Indigenous people who lived in, and cared for, this country for millennia.
Tarra-Bulga National Park in Gippsland is a significant part of the cultural heritage of the Brataualung peoples of the Gunaikurnai.
The park lies on a central part of the Gunaikurnai creation storyline. Borun, carrying his canoe, travelled from the mountains in the north to the place called Tarra Warackel, on the coast south of the park, now called Port Albert.
This painting was inspired by my experience visiting the ancient Tarra-Bulga forest, which has meaning for me. In 1858 my Scottish great-great-grandfather travelled through this country, as the mailman to Port Albert.