Shannon Smiley, Beside the tracks 2015, oil on canvas, 92 x 122 cm. Bayside City Council Art and Heritage Collection. Purchased 2017.oil on canvaslandscape, vegetation, trees, train tracks, painting, shannon smiley, photorealist, leaves

Shannon Smiley was commissioned to create this new painting in 2017. As part of his research he explored Darebin Creek and surrounds. He explains the inspiration behind his new work."‘I'm enjoying making this work and becoming intimate with the Darebin area. I’ve been exploring the edge lands of Darebin, chasing down historically significant sites I've heard about, like the U.S. military bunkers and the place where the Batman treaty was signed." Artist Bio Shannon Smiley is a graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. His practice has been acknowledged through a number of significant awards, including Metro Art Prize (winner, 2012) and the John Leslie Art Prize (winner, 2014). Shannon recently won the People´s Choice Award for the inaugural Bayside Acquisitive Art Prize 2015. Smiley looks to the Australian suburban environment for places of enchantment. In the overlooked and undefined spaces without purpose or function, a wilderness grows with an urgent will to live. Smiley’s works are romantic depictions of contemporary landscape.darebin creek