The Hard Light of Day: An Artist’s Life in the Australian Outback

A rare glimpse into the Australian heartland and the interactions of black and white Australians through the eyes of an artist.

Two years after artist Rod Moss arrived in Alice Springs in Australia’s outback to teach painting, he met an indigenous couple who had set up camp in the gully beside his home. Over the next twenty-five years, his friendship with Xavier and Petrina Neil and the friendships that grew from it with the families of Whitegate, an Arrernte aboriginal camp on the outskirts of town, would nourish and challenge Moss beyond his imagining.

The Hard Light of Day offers a rare insight into the reality of life in the Outback, from the contours of the MacDonnell Ranges and the textures and sounds of Arrernte culture, to the endemic violence, alcoholism and ill-health that continue to devastate Aboriginal lives. In recalling the relationships and experiences that have shaped his life and work in Alice Springs, Moss reveals the human face behind the statistics and celebrates the enriching, transformative power of friendship. Illustrated with Moss’s evocative paintings and photographs, The Hard Light of Day is an incredible journey into a world that is rarely glimpsed, and an artist’s chronicle of the moments that have inspired him.