Vicki Stavrou understands the communicative power of colour – it functions as a visual language for her. ‘I am always immersed in thinking about colour. My main goal in painting is to find the most exciting and beautiful combinations that really sing,’ Stavrou declares. In speaking about the exhibition’s title, Golden Daze, she relates that many of her paintings exude an affirmative, golden hue. ‘And sometimes I do feel ‘heady’ being so absorbed in the intensity of my colour choices. Working full-time as an artist is living my dream and that too equates to golden days: Golden Daze.’ Incidentally, the brand of the paint medium Stavrou always uses is called Golden Acrylics.
Sydney-based Sophie Gralton tells that the title for her new body of work, Paint by Numbers, is a ‘tongue in cheek’ jest as to just how opposite her painterly oeuvre is. The antithesis of predetermined, fastidiously rendered illustrations, her concern is the relationship she has with paint: ‘the excitement of the mark, the loss and gains encountered when creating a new work is my impetus.’ Gralton wants us to respond not solely to the subject matter but also to the aesthetic signals the painting communicates. In this quest she employs a direct technique, the loaded brush spontaneously eliciting form and engendering a visceral reaction.
Charles Blackman is one of Australia’s favourite iconic artists. An acute sense of emotional interplay between the viewer, the subject and the artist is at the center of his artworks. He is particularly renowned for his rendition of feelings and the feminine, showing up and focusing on particularities of the most tender and complex emotions that are difficult to express in any other way.
As an introduction to the new Tedder Avenue gallery, Anthea Polson Art presents a selection of limited-edition photographic artworks by the multi-awarded Samantha Everton. The unerring integrity of her photographic processes and an innate ability to access the subliminal in sumptuous visual narratives has won significant international acclaim for the Melbourne-based artist. Numerous series of works spanning 13 years have visually explored subjects “straddling dual worlds” in a quest for self-identity and transcendence amidst cultural variances.
Curious hybrid creatures, schematic figures and plant forms advance and submerge amidst linear markings and colourful geometric shapes. They personify Jill Lewis’s musings about the worlds within and around her. Akin to the intent and pictorial techniques employed by primitive and ancient cultures, the scenarios are invested with symbolism. “As in Egyptian frescoes, the size and position of the characters can be representative of their significance in my own imagined stories,” she imparts.
Secreted somewhere amidst tangles of filigreed foliage may lie the little tadpole and frog pond that was the inspiration for Robert Ryan’s intended new body of works. The pond and its creatures had been a chance discovery he’d made as a child during a brief roadside stop on a long journey. The rebuff of his plea to come see its wonders was his first inkling that he possessed an innate awareness of the ‘other’ shared by very few – the artist’s perspective!
Characterised by an intense involvement in the materiality of paint, Steve Tyerman’s works are the outcome of an intimate engagement with the environment. His art however, communicates a visual experience beyond the strictures of traditional landscape painting. Form, space, colour and light become simultaneously resolved in the immediacy of the palette knife gesture.
The title of the exhibition, As Days Go By, subtly references Martin Edge’s time in his Strathpine studio. The walls are aglow in a bright orange hue – his favourite colour since childhood – and bedecked in photos and clippings. An impressive collection of antique curios provides quiet company. Commenting on his experience of the recent lockdown he says, “It sometimes felt like I was stopped forever at a red traffic light and waiting for it to turn green! But my sense of humour is still going strong, painting makes me happy.” Martin’s vibrant works resonate with his sense of joie de vivre and optimism.
Gold Coast-based Erica Gray imparts that the current exhibition’s paintings and sculptures further her life.e.quatic series in celebrating the vivid colours, intricate patterning and structural complexities observed in a variety of marine creatures, coral formations particularly. Known as the ‘rainforests of the sea’, coral reefs have long been venerated by ancient civilizations for their alchemical, curative and ornamental properties.
Melbourne based artist Cathy Quinn is well recognised for her joyful fluid oil paintings. She creates abstracted landscapes taking pictorial cues from places visited. The artists outdoor scenes are grounded in familiar terrain, yet they are a combination of memories of place melded together to create her own world. She speaks about mood being an important aspect of these works and that time and place evoke the feeling and direction of the painting.
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