page_title: Reinis Zusters
section_title: Blue Mountains
hierarchical_section_title: Reinis Zusters / Blue Mountains
caption_attribution_description: English: Blue Mountains rocks and wood
context_page_description: Reinis Zusters was a Latvian-born Australian artist. Zusters was a prolific painter, working predominantly in oils, painting many large landscapes, including triptychs of the Blue Mountains. Zusters drew much of his inspiration from the Australian countryside, depicting the colour and form of nature as a rich and vibrant panorama.
  His work is represented in numerous public and private collections in Australia and abroad. His work can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. He won numerous prestigious awards in Australia, Japan and USA and was honoured with the Order of Australia Medal in 1994. He was born to Latvian parents in Odessa, Ukraine, and died in his studio in Wentworth Falls, Australia in 1999.
context_section_description: In 1976, Zusters married his third wife, artist Venita Salnajs, who is also Latvian born, and they moved to Wentworth Falls. Inspired by the mountains, he embarked on a much freer style of richly painted, spattered landscapes and details, capturing the essence and spirit of the Australian landscape and sky.
  He often prepared the canvasses for his mountain landscapes in batches, laid out on the grass, splattering backgrounds in the manner of Jackson Pollock and completing with washes and pale glazes of colour. His paintings often featured skies in his distinctive vibrant blue.
  He said at the time, “The Blue Mountains lure me. The close-focus and long-range aspects of the landscape present a magical ambiguity and this, coupled with its logs, lichen and moss and perpetual blue sky, totally absorb me.”  
  While living in the Blue Mountains and exhibiting at the Holdsworth Galleries, the coffee table book ‘Spiral Vision – Reinis Zusters’ was published in 1981 to showcase his work.
  Zusters exhibited at the Lewers Bequest and Penrith Regional Gallery and Ozartspace Katoomba, among many others. Blue Mountains City Council purchased several of his works and architect Nigel Bell designed the Conservation Hut in Wentworth Falls, which was built to house and display several of his larger paintings.
  Zusters remained in the Blue Mountains for the rest of his life, living in his home ‘Jamieson’, near the Falls and Darwin’s Walk. He died on 8 October, 1999 in his favourite painting chair in his studio at Wentworth Falls, one week short of his 80ᵗʰ birthday. He was buried in the Latvian section of Rookwood Cemetery, Sydney.
caption: Blue Mountains landscape
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