In this electrifying composition, John Olsen plunges us into a nocturnal ecosystem alive with motion and mystery. Against a deep, inky ground, incandescent reds, searing oranges and flashes of electric blue surge and scatter, conjuring a teeming world of amphibian and aquatic life. Olsen’s signature calligraphic line darts and loops across the surface like a living current, mapping not a fixed landscape, but a pulsing, sensory experience of it.

Forms emerge and dissolve in a kind of visual improvisation: frog-like bodies, cellular clusters, and drifting organic shapes appear momentarily before being reabsorbed into the whole. This oscillation between recognition and abstraction creates a dynamic tension, as though we are witnessing the inner life of the landscape, its rhythms, energies, and unseen connections - rather than its outward appearance.

Both exuberant and immersive, the work exemplifies Olsen’s enduring fascination with waterholes and wetlands as sites of vitality and transformation. As a hand-signed fine art print, it offers collectors a striking and atmospheric expression of his vision - an image that vibrates with life, movement, and the restless poetry of the natural world.

John OLSEN (1928 - 2023)
'Lake Encounter'
archival pigment print on paper
Image Size: 100 x 110 cm
Dimensions: 113 x 116 cm
Signed: Signed and editioned in margin: AP John Olsen
Comes with Letter of Provenance

This image was selected as the cover for the 2016 publication John Olsen: Journeys into the ‘You Beaut Country’ by Jenny Zimmer and Ken McGregor. A copy of the book is included with the print.

Condition is Very Good

(c) John Olsen / Copyright Agency