‘Incidental Landscape’ represents a particular approach to ‘landscape’ which looks at the way this genre has changed and the cultural shifts that have occurred, particularly in relation to concepts of nature and land use within Australia. The paintings therefore sometimes borrow imagery from that tradition and comment playfully on the way these references have perhaps changed in their reception over a century or more and particularly in relation to environmental considerations today.

Wilson explains that when he made these paintings, he was aware of a yearning and type of melancholy for dusty oil paintings that capture a particular mood that represented a small intimacy of shared time between the painter and their subject.