Womerah Lane

Thirty years in the making, Womerah Lane is a collection of stories, paintings and drawings that cover the period Tom Carment has lived in the inner-city suburb of Darlinghurst while travelling the country as a plein air artist.

Carment writes as he paints – from life – capturing the likeness of a particular place in time, or the moment when he sees something striking or strange. His paintings and drawings are small, limited by what he can carry with him on his travels. In his writing too he is a miniaturist working on a large scale. Free-flowing yet nuanced, his work evokes the places he visits – farms, beaches, cottages, building sites – and the people and objects he encounters, friends and strangers, the homeless and the famous, fish, typewriters and eggs. Each has its own story.

It is Carment’s quiet determination to capture life as it passes, across all corners of the country, that makes this collection unique.

SHORTLISTED: NSW Literary Awards – Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction 2021

Intimately observant, informal, and warmly appealing… This beautifully written, illustrated, and produced book enlarges our vision of Australia through the highlights of a distinctive and inspiring career.
Susan Wyndham, Australian Book Review

Carment examine[s] how everyday encounters, family folklore and the nostalgia of things have informed his painting and his creative identity… Womerah Lane is a rich study of contrasts, likely to appeal to readers with an appetite for Australian biography, the arcane of the everyday and the many (sensory) pleasures of landscape artwork.
Nathan Smith, Books+Publishing