There is a sense of elation when you see something familiar as if for the first time. Looking is one thing but seeing is something entirely different and for the three Western Australian artists identified as the Fremantle Realists – Marcus Beilby, Ken Wadrop, Ray Beattie – this process of seeing as revelation became their modus operandi. They were avowedly localist, rejecting the influence of international abstraction that had taken root in art schools in the early 1970s. Their work was the focus of an exhibition on display at the Fremantle Arts Centre in 2014. While still students Beilby, Wadrop, Beattie,…