Then Today Tomorrow, a multi panelled painting was inspired by Marion Mahony’s famous panoramic paintings on silk, she titled The View from the Summit of Mt Ainslie. Marion’s painted on silk, measuring 80 x 295cm looks southward, across the Griffin/Mahony vision for the future Canberra, over Red Hill and recognisable landforms toward the Brindabella ranges. Skewes later made another panoramic painting and imagined pre-colonial view except in verso looking back to Mt Ainslie see https://artverses.blogspot.com/2024/03/dreaming-walter-dreaming-walter.html
In his earlier and award winning artwork of 2004, Then today tomorrow, Jeffree Skewes pays homage to Mahony’s original artwork by re-enacting his own version using scrafitto/plaster techniques, contrasted with alternating acrylic painted panels and the exact dimensions. In the alternating panels, Jeffree paints his own updated vistas of modern Canberra contrasted to the original Mahony vision panels now inscribed in plaster.
In 2013, to mark the centenary of Canberra, Then Today Tomorrow was exhibited at M16 Artspace https://citynews.com.au/2013/marions-view-redrawn/
