As interior designer David Flack bushwhacked to artist Sydney Ball’s former residence deep within a 10-hectare block about an hour’s drive north-west of Sydney, he thought the scrubland “at first glance quite grey and dusty green” until his eyes adjusted to the “subtle pinks and blues and fawny hues that make up the native palette”.

Once inside the corrugated iron stronghold of one of Australia’s most renowned abstract painters, who died in 2017 aged 83, his pupils duly dilated.