GALLERY NEWS 10 March 2010: Garry Shead, Arthur Boyd, Zhong Chen

83 Moncur Street Woollahra NSW 2025
tel: 02 9362 0297 fax: 02 9362 0318
email: art@evabreuerartdealer.com.au
website: www.evabreuerartdealer.com.au


New in the Gallery

Garry Shead (b.1942)

Garry Shead (b.1942)
Wye Wurk 1994
Oil on board
90 x 120cm
Signed 'Garry Shead 94' lower left
Provenance:
Private collection, Queensland
Schubert Gallery, Gold Coast
no.11266

Visit our website to view other paintings by Garry Shead


Arthur Boyd (1920-1999)

Arthur Boyd (1920-1999)
Pulpit Rock, Bathers and Muzzled Dog c.1987
Oil on canvas
152.3 x 123cm
Signed 'Arthur Boyd' lower right
no.9184

Illustrated: Exhibition Catalogue, Arthur Boyd, Australian Embassy, Washington DC, 1986
Exhibited: Arthur Boyd, Australian Embassy, Washington DC, 30 May – 21 June 1986.

Born into a lineage of gifted painters, potters, musicians and architects, Arthur Boyd became the most celebrated member, in Australia’s cultural history, of that revered artistic family. Arthur Boyd is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state galleries, many regional galleries and many other important public collections both in Australia and overseas.

The Shoalhaven River is one of the most important subjects in Arthur Boyd’s remarkable body of work. The Boyd’s purchased the first of two properties, Riversdale, in 1973 and the second, Bundanon in 1979. Pulpit Rock, Bathers and Muzzled Dog c.1987 assaults the viewer with a vivid depiction of nature vs man-made hedonism. A dramatic painting with much wall power, it is concerned with the destruction of beauty, peace and tranquility in the natural environment through ignorant and pleasure seeking pastimes such as water skiing. This is clearly evident in the violent juxtaposition of a muzzled dog chasing a helmet wearing human figure (which appears to morph into an animalistic symbol of speed and greed) against a serene seemingly untouched escarpment of natural landscape. (Janet McKenzie, Arthur Boyd: Art and Life, pp.186-189)

Visit our website to view other paintings by Arthur Boyd


Zhong Chen (b.1969)

Arriving in the gallery soon

Zhong Chen (b.1969)
Rainy Day 6
Oil on linen
90 x 122 cm

Visit our website to view paintings by Zhong Chen


Ray Crooke (b.1922)

Ray Crooke (b.1922)
Mother and Child c.1985
oil on canvas
60 x 50cm
Provenance: Private collection, Sydney
no.11274

Visit our website to view paintings by Ray Crooke


Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)

Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)
New Guinea Series 1968
ripolin and mixed media on paper
52 x 79cm (sight size)
Signed: 'Nolan' lower right
Provenance: Savill Gallery, Sydney. (Label attached verso)
The Everad Read Gallery, Johannesburg. (Label attached verso)
Private collection, Sydney
no. 11272

Visit our website to view works on paper by Sir Sidney Nolan


Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992)
Central Australia 1967
ripolin on paper
52 x 76cm (sight size)
Signed: 'Nolan 1967' lower right
Provenance: Private collection, Sydney
no. 11273

Visit our website to view works on paper by Sir Sidney Nolan


James Gleeson (1915-2008)

James Gleeson (1915-2008)
Figure in Psychoscape c.1965
oil on board
14.5 x 11 cm
Signed 'Gleeson' lower right
Provenance: Private collection, Sydney
no.11271

Visit our website to view paintings by James Gleeson


Adriane Strampp (b.1960)

Arriving soon in the gallery

Adriane Strampp (b.1960)
Untitled 2004
Oil on canvas
150 x 350 cm (total - 3 panels)
Provenance: Private Collection Sydney
Eva Breuer Art Dealer, 2004
no.6648a

Visit our website to view other paintings by Adriane Strampp




Current Exhibition

Wayne Eager (b.1957)
New Paintings 2010

Wayne Eager (b.1957)
Green Grass 2010
acrylic on linen
120 x 65 cm
no.11232

Visit our website to view other paintings by Wayne Eager




Upcoming Exhibition

Food & Art
On view from 26th March 2010

David Boyd (b.1924)

David Boyd (b.1924)
Two Children with apple and orange 1999
Oil on board
16.5 x 19cm
no.3740

Visit our website to view other paintings from Food & Art


Children in Art
On view from 6th April 2010

Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)

Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)
Mother and Child 1977
Etching 32/60
60.5 x 45cm (plate size)
75.5 x 53cm (sheet size)
Edition of 60, with 8-10 APs
Printer: Max Miller, Sydney
Publisher: Port Jackson Press, Sydney
Exhibited: 'Recent Paintings and Drawings', Fischer Fine Art Limited, London, September 1977, cat. 74
no.7059

Note: The mother in this etching is the artist's sister Fran, with her baby (Source: Brett Whiteley: The Graphics 1961-1992, Deutscher Art Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 1995)

Visit our website to view other paintings from Children in Art


Pam Sackville (b.1944)
New Paintings 2010

Opening Saturday 17 April 2010, 3-5PM

Paintings available to view now

Pam Sackville (b.1944)
Pears in a Napoleon Dish 2008
Watercolour on arches paper
75 x 105cm
no.9647

Visit our website to view other paintings by Pam Sackville




Featured Graphics

John Coburn (1925-2006)

John Coburn (1925-2006)
Cosi fan Tutti 1990
Screen Print (13 colours)
Edition A/P on BFK Rives
artist's proof: 10
60 x 50cm (image)
76 x 56.5cm (sheet)
signed, dated LR, inscribed with title LC and with edition LL
printed by Michael Phelps, Sydney
commissioned by Opera Australia on the theme of one of
the operas performed in that season. Due to timing his
print was not part of a set of 5 prints by other artists, also on
opera themes, commissioned around the same time.
no.11222

Visit our website to view graphics by John Coburn


David Wadelton

David Wadelton
Still Life - Hand and Foot
Lithograph 42/60
64 x 45.5cm
Commissioned by the Australian Opera for its
Australian Opera's 40th Anniversary Print Portfolio
(to be sold individually)
no.7735

Visit our website to view graphics by Important Australian Artists




Current Exhibition

March
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Wayne Eager

Upcoming Exhibitions

March
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Food & Art

April
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Children in Art
Gallery 2: Pam Sackville

May
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Brian Seidel

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GALLERY NEWS 27 JANUARY 2010: Leonard French, Garry Shead, Ray Crooke, Brett Whiteley

83 Moncur Street Woollahra NSW 2025
tel: 02 9362 0297 fax: 02 9362 0318
email: art@evabreuerartdealer.com.au

website: www.evabreuerartdealer.com.au

Important Australian Paintings

Leonard French (b.1928)

Leonard French (b.1928)
Winter Fountain c.1987-93
enamel and gold leaf on hessian on composition board
122 x 137 cm
Signed: l.r. 'French'
Provenance: Private collection Perth
no.11197

Throughout his career as an artist Leonard French has held true to the philosophy of art at the service of the common man. His works frequently depict epic stories, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and events from the Bible. These stories allow him a platform to explore universal themes, most frequently the struggle and spiritual journey of a hero. His highly individual and distinctive works reveal a plethora of influences, from Byzantine mosaics (his symmetry and precision), to Gothic (bright colours outlined in black), Romanesque architecture (squat, solid figures) Cubism and the work of Léger to name but a few. This work, Winter Fountain, exemplifies all these elements. The two figures in the work – one black, one white and both with distinctive rounded heads, first began appearing in French’s work in the late 1980’s. Like many facets of French’s work they appear to be highly symbolic, but with the exact meaning intended by the artist obscured. Other works with these figures include The Release (in the collection of the Bendigo Art Gallery), Duet and The Tightrope (both in private collections.)

French's work is represented at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, all state galleries, most regional galleries and is also included in many major international collections, including the MoMA, New York. French also completed numerous monumental commissions in Australia, the most famous being the glass ceiling in the Great Hall at the National Gallery of Victoria.

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Garry Shead (b.1942)

Garry Shead (b.1942)
Dancer c.1998
Oil on board
59 x 43 cm
Signed 'Shead' lower left
Provenance: Private collection Sydney
no.11134

As Sasha Grishin describes the series: “Throughout the series the constant recurring motif is that of the fully clad male dancer, usually shown in an evening suit and occasionally appearing slightly awkward and uncertain of himself, accompanied by a nude, or an almost nude female dancer. On one very basic level there is the aspect of voyeuristic erotic wish-fulfillment, drawing on the surrealist strategy of undressing the woman with the male gaze that had been so effectively employed by Renne Magrite. Shead’s female dancers are of great sensuous beauty and lyrical charm. There is a hint of a more metaphysical dimension of this dance, relating it to the dance of life as interpreted by artists like Edvard Munch. The Dance is performed on an allegorical stage like the arena of life, sometimes with an awareness of an audience and sometimes under the harsh glow of the spotlights. In most of the ‘Dance Sequence’ paintings there is an indication of an open door in the background, at times shown as the source of light, but in all instances the door way is a path for escape. Shead achieves in this series of paintings a great lyricism in the paint surface, a warm sensuousness through which the female flesh glows in a rich radiance. Increasingly these intimate interior settings allude to ambiguous and seductive dream-like reality where ideas and interpretations float free from gravity and verbal associations."

Reference: Grishin S, Garry Shead and The Erotic Muse, Craftsman House, 2001 p.166.

Visit our web site to view other paintings by Garry Shead


Ray Crooke (b.1922)

Ray Crooke (b. 1922)
Villagers Relaxing
oil on canvas
75 x 61cm
signed lower left 'R. Crooke'
Provenance: Private collection Sydney
no.11049

Visit our website to view other paintings by Ray Crooke


Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)

Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)
The Luxembourg Gardens (glimpse) (detail)
Pen and Ink on Paper
55.5 x 75 cm
Initialed 'BW' lower right
Illustrated: Brett Whiteley: Paris Regarde de Côté, Australian Galleries, 1990, Plate 41.
Provenance: Australian Galleries
Private collection Melbourne since 1992
no.11042

The Luxembourg Gardens (glimpse) is part of a series of works on paper which Whiteley produced in Paris between June and July of 1989. Whiteley had rented an apartment on the Rue de Tournon and produced one work a day for 60 days. These are regarde de cote (sidelong glances), which Whiteley saw as the answer to creating images of the city which were not cliché. "millions of pictures have been painted – how to find a new vision is the challenge. What one is after is a high-octane visual poetic journalism, brief, essential and above all fresh. This can best be achieved by drawing, and not the heavy métier of oil paint." Offered for the first time since it was acquired from the Paris Regarde de Coté exhibition this is a superb example of Whiteley's masterful draughtsmanship.

Reference: Brett Whiteley's introduction to: Brett Whiteley: Paris Regarde De Côté, Australian Galleries, 1990.

Visit our website to view other artworks by Brett Whiteley


John Coburn (1925-2006)

John Coburn (1925 - 2006)
Central Desert Painting
Oil on canvas
183 x 244cm
no.10080

Visit our website to view other paintings by John Coburn


Elisabeth Kruger (b.1955)

Elisabeth Kruger (b.1955)
Cirque 2008
oil on linen
122.5 x 153cm
no.10884

Visit our web site to view other paintings by Elisabeth Kruger


Ken Whisson (b.1927)

Ken Whisson (b.1927)
A Day in the Country 1967
Oil on board
73 x 102cm
Signed 'WHISSON' upper left
Inscribed verso "A DAY IN THE COUNTRY" / A DAY IN THE COUNTRY / CLEAR AND COLD / "THE FOXES ON THE HILLS BARKED CLEAR AND COLD"
Provenance: Watters Gallery, Sydney; Esa Jaske Gallery, Sudney
Exhibited: Ken Whisson: Paintings 1957-1985, Broken Hill City Art Gallery, New South Wales, 1985 (cat. 13)
Reference: Ken Whisson Paintings 1947-1999, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2001, p. 120, cat. 19 (illustration p. 35)
Ken Whisson: Paintings 1957-1985, Broken Hill City Art Gallery, New South Wales, 1985, p. 50, cat. 13 (illustration p. 31)
no.7991

Ken Whisson is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state galleries, many regional galleries, as well as many other important public collections in Australia and overseas. He has been the recipient of many awards including the 1979 John McCaughey Memorial Art Prize.

Ken Whisson's highly individual form of painting is often derived from and stimulated by memory and intuition. John MacDonald explains that Whisson is "asking the viewer to see with the eye of the mind rather than expecting a perfect match between the object and it's representation." In A Day in the Country, Whisson pushes the paint around his canvases at oblique and obscure angles, creating opposing red, green yellow and blue shapes and forms which echo a figure or a chair a dog or a boat. The resulting painting is fluid and dynamic.

Illustrated: McDonald. J., et al, Ken Whisson Paintings 1947 - 1999, Niagara Publishing, 2001, p.35.

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Roland Wakelin (1887-1971)

Roland Wakelin (1887-1971)
Terrace Houses Double Bay 1963
Oil on board
45 x 64 cm
Signed 'R.Wakelin 63' bottom left
no.11144

Provenance:
Private collection, Melbourne
Private collection, Sydney

Exhibited:
Toorak Art Gallery (label attached verso) - On loan from Mr P English
Geelong Art Gallery (label attached verso)
Roland Wakelin Retrospective Art Gallery of NSW 8 - 30 April 1967 cat no.87
Roland Wakelin: Master of Colour, A Newcastle Regional Gallery Touring exhibition, 2002
Toured to Newcastle City Art Gallery 10-13 May 1967

Illustrated:
Roland Wakelin: Master of Colour, A Newcastle Regional Gallery Touring exhibition, 2002

Visit our web site to view other paintings by Roland Wakelin


Patrick Hockey (1948-1992)

Patrick Hockey (1948-1992)
Untitled 1975
oil on board
44 x 44 cm
signed 'Hockey 75' lower left
provenance: private collection Sydney
no.9656

Patrick Hockey is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, all state galleries, many regional galleries as well as many other important public collections both in Australia and internationally.

Hockey’s Australian ‘Outback Hotel’ series (loosely worked renderings of outback hotels and their patrons) capture the essence of the sun-hardened heart of the land and it’s quintessentially Australian characters.

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Arthur Murch (1902-1989)

Arthur Murch (1902-1989)
Leda and the swan
Oil on board
39.5 x 49.5 cm
no.5186a

Arthur Murch, a Sydney based painter, trained under Dattilo Rubbo and the sculptor Raynor Hoff in the early 1920s. Murch is renowned for his ability to recreate luminosity in paint. He won the NSW Society of Artists Travelling Art Scholarship in 1925 and worked as a studio assistant to George Lambert before travelling throughout Europe in the 1930s. He was appointed Official War Artist in 1942 and won the Archibald prize in 1949. Under Lambert, Murch developed a romantic style of painting. His paintings portray an idyllic version of Australian life, depicting a playful Arcadian seaside existence. Experimenting with colour, pattern and light, Murch developed a distinctive style.

Arthur Murch is represented in the National Gallery of Australia and the Australian War Memorial, Canberra, and all State and many regional galleries.

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Jean Appleton (1911-2003)

Jean Appleton (1911 - 2003)
Early Morning Light c.1978
Oil on board
78 x 99 cm
no.5100

Jean Appleton is represented in many state and regional galleries as well as other public collections in Australia and overseas including the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. She was the recipient of many coveted awards including the inaugural Portia Geach Memorial Prize in 1965.

“Jean Appleton’s practice has always tended to still lifes and landscape, and since the mid-1970s at least she has been almost exclusively involved in painting interiors – works which at one level vary little in the flowers, fruits, furniture, jugs and drapery they utilise – and yet provide, as the still-life genre has traditionally done, endless possibilities for the artist to contemplate reality, experiment visually, and construct a vocabulary of creative expression."

Reference: Simpson, Caroline, Jean Appleton: a lifetime with art, Woollahra, N.S.W, 1998 pp.89

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Brian Dunlop (1938-2009)

Brian Dunlop (1938-2009)
Malatesta Kneeling 1979
oil on canvas
121 x 169cm
no.5599

Visit our web site to view other important Australian paintings


Ena Joyce (b.1926)

Ena Joyce (b.1926)
Bathing Sheds Round the Bay c.1958
oil on board
39.5 x 44cm
no.7231

Bathing Sheds Round the Bay c.1958 is a beautiful example of Joyce’s wonderful colour harmonies and sensitive observation of light.

"While teaching at Ballarat I met my future husband. We lived in Melbourne where I often painted round Port Phillip Bay and the areas familiar to Clarice Beckett." Ena Joyce

Visit our website to view other paintings by Ena Joyce




Introducing Andrew Paviour

Andrew Paviour
Wedding Reception
oil on canvas
66 x 76 cm
no.11189

Visit our website to view other paintings by Andrew Paviour


Andrew Paviour
At the Races
oil on canvas
76 x 84 cm

Visit our website to view other paintings by Andrew Paviour




Contemporary Australian Paintings

Adriane Strampp (b.1960)

Adriane Strampp (b.1960)
Stags 2009
Oil on linen
101.5 x 101.5 cm
no.10650

Visit our website to view other paintings by Adriane Strampp


Christopher McVinish (b.1952)

Christopher McVinish (b.1952)
The Ongoing Moment
oil on canvas
110 x 110cm
no.11196

Visit our website to view other paintings by Christopher McVinish




Featured Graphic

Fred Williams (1927-1982)

Fred Williams (1927-1982)
Upwey Landscape 1965-1966
etching 16/22
21 x 13cm
signed 'Fred Williams' lower right
no.97355

Fred Williams is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, most state galleries, many regional galleries as well as many other public collections throughout Australia. Upwey Landscape 1965-66, a rare etching of this period, is an example of the unique visual shorthand which Williams devised to capture the beauty of the Australian landscape.

Visit our web site to view other graphics by Fred Williams

Current Exhibition

January
Gallery 1 & 2: Summer Exhibition


Upcoming Exhibitions

February
Gallery 1 & 2: Summer Exhibition

March
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Wayne Eager

April
Gallery 1: Autumn Exhibition
Gallery 2: Pam Sackville

Please send us an email if you wish to be added to the weekly newsletter list.

Staff Picks - Gallery Associate Megan Fizell

Clifton Pugh (1924 - 1990)
Hand & Orchid
Etching 25/75
22 x 15cm (image size)
33 x 25cm (paper size)
no.11067

Born in 1924 in Richmond, Victoria, Clifton Pugh made a name for himself for his portraiture and landscape paintings, after serving in the Australian Imperial Forces in New Guinea in his early years. Pugh attended the National Gallery of Victoria Art School from 1947 to 1949, and then spent much of his life in his bush property 'Dunmoochin' outside of Melbourne. Greatly inspired by the natural environment, Pugh was joined in his love of the land by other artists, who together with him became the Dunmoochin Artists Society in 1953. In the year before his death in 1990, Pugh set up the Dunmoochin Foundation to preserve the bushland and enable other artists to use the studios in future.

Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)
The Luxembourg Gardens (glimpse) (detail)
Pen and Ink on Paper
55.5 x 75 cm
Initialed 'BW' lower right
Illustrated: Brett Whiteley: Paris Regarde de Côté, Australian Galleries, 1990, Plate 41.
Provenance: Australian Galleries
Private collection Melbourne since 1992
no.11042

The Luxembourg Gardens (glimpse) is part of a series of works on paper which Whiteley produced in Paris between June and July of 1989. Whiteley had rented an apartment on the Rue de Tournon and produced one work a day for 60 days. These are regarde de cote (sidelong glances), which Whiteley saw as the answer to creating images of the city which were not cliché. "millions of pictures have been painted – how to find a new vision is the challenge. What one is after is a high-octane visual poetic journalism, brief, essential and above all fresh. This can best be achieved by drawing, and not the heavy métier of oil paint." Offered for the first time since it was acquired from the Paris Regarde de Coté exhibition this is a superb example of Whiteley's masterful draughtsmanship.

Reference: Brett Whiteley's introduction to: Brett Whiteley: Paris Regarde De Côté, Australian Galleries, 1990.

Adriane Strampp (b.1960)
Stags 2009
Oil on linen
101.5 x 101.5 cm
no.10650

Strampp’s new work takes another look at the horse and the landscape, in a quieter and more contemplative manner, together with the use of a limited palette. Her work continues to explore the intangible and evocative, that communicates before it is understood, and the importance of and relationship between scale, surface and the poetic image through a method of layering and reduction that reflects the experience of connection, through history on either a personal or broader level. Subject and shadow are indeterminate, and the viewer is drawn into the work to decide between what is ‘real’ and what is not. More importantly, it is hoped that the viewer will experience a connection of experience through the work. This new body of work will be exhibited later in the year as part of her Master’s degree submission.

Christopher Beaumont (b.1961)
Still Life with Quince, Artichoke and Ivy 2006
Oil on linen
76 x 84cm

The space in these works is a virtual or abstract space while the rendering of objects wholly representational. I had a great interest in astronomy as a child. The heavens are an abstract emptiness with objects moving on principles of geometry. The world of atoms & molecules are often pictured as coloured spheres in this same black space. Atoms and molecules don’t actually look like this at all but this helps us to understand them conceptually. It is the same space of 3D computer modelling. I have grown up in a time when these images are commonplace and this is definitely an influence on the way I conceive of paintings. -Christopher Beaumont, 2007

Kerry Lester
Aridne auf Naxos
Woodcut print 42/60
76.5 x 56.5cm
Commissioned by the Australian Opera for its
Australian Opera's 40th Anniversity Print Portfolio
(to be sold individually)
no.7733

Geoffrey Proud (b. 1946)
Near the Orchard – a Study in Black 2008
oil on canvas
89 x 120cm
no.9843

Often quirky and verging on the surreal, Geoffrey Proud's paintings in oil and pastel are like fractured fairytales. Depicting a world of innocence with a sometimes ominous edge, Proud's paintings are fantastic and bizarre. His choice of subjects is broad, including children and childhood narratives, flowers, still lifes and nudes. Alternating between expressionist impastoed brushwork and sensitive detail, he experiments freely with vibrant colour and varying textures. The highly glazed surfaces of his recent oils give his scenes an ethereal and otherworldly quality. Proud has won numerous awards including the Sulman Prize in 1976 for a painting on perspex, and the Archibald prize in 1990 for his portrait of writer Dorothy Hewett. He has exhibited consistently in all state capitals since 1966 and is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; many State and regional gallery collections; Parliament House collections in Canberra and Sydney; Artbank; IBM collection; and the Elton John collection, London.

Tomasz Talaj (b. 1964)
Epic Flight 2007
Oil on plywood
10.5 x 15.3cm
no. 9432

Sarah Edmondson
Untitled (Lemons on a Pink Plate) 2003
Oil on canvas
30 x 30cm
Signed 'sarah edmondson '03' lower right
no.8091

Stephen Nothling (b.1962)
Swimming Bird II
Oil on canvas
10 x 10 cm

Known for his paintings of paradise–evoking roses, this exhibition of paradise landscapes was born out of Nothling’s monumental 2008 self portrait entitled Self Portrait out the front, exhibited in the Salon de Refusés last year. The work was in homage to Nothling’s own paradise – his home on the outskirts of Brisbane – and from it emerged this larger series loosely based on local Brisbane landscapes.

Immersed within the idea of paradise and perfection, Nothling created the fictional, ‘Nowhereland,’ an imaginary destination which acts as a backdrop for his pictorial theatrics. In Nowhereland Nothling’s parachuted navigator, (perhaps the pilot from the biplane in Joyflight) descends gently to the middle of nowhere.

Victor Rubin (b.1950)
Still Life II, Jan 1975
oil on masonite
15.2 x 20.3 cm
Signed and dated lower right 'Jan 75 VR.'
no.10731

Painted when Rubin was in his early to late 20’s the boards have been archived in Victor’s studio since they were painted. The period covers 1974-1976 with the majority of paintings from 1974-75 when he was living in Raine Street Bondi Junction in Sydney. This period of his work follows on from his involvement with the famous Yellow House in Macleay Street, Potts Point where he exhibited in 1971 at which point the Yellow House attracted the most cutting edge contemporary artists of the time including Brett Whiteley and others. The period is also marked by a strong influence from John Olsen who was Rubin’s teacher at the Bakery Art School and who remains a close friend.

Adriane Stramp - Winner Viewer's Choice for the Mt Eyre Vineyards Art Prize

Adriane Strampp, The Crossing, 2009, Oil on linen, 90 x 90 cm

Congratulations to Adriane Strampp whose painting The Crossing was the viewer's choice winner for the 2009 Mt Eyre Vineyards Art Prize. Click here to view available works by Adriane Strampp from Eva Breuer Art Dealer.

Press Release: Adriane Strampp - Mimesis

Adriane Strampp (born USA, education UK) is a Melbourne based artist presently completing a MFA by Research at Monash University. Her current body of work explores earlier concerns, pruned down to core elements both in subject and colour, examining the subtleties and nuances of memory and experience through poetic imagery and personal mythology. It is as much about what is left out as what is said. Current influences range from Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space to the writings and photography of Patti Smith.

A romantic and figurative painter working through series over long periods, Strampp tends to focus on a central image as a vehicle only for the underlying message. It is not about the subject, but rather that which it conveys. The figure is often felt, but remains in absentia. In early work (mid to late 1980’s) the subject was the horse, sometimes heroic, sometimes damaged, but always passionate. This work was largely influenced by both the new German Neo-Expressionists of the time, and by English artist John Walker, who was highly influential during his residency in Melbourne art schools at that time. From the late 1980’s the horse was slowly replaced by the dress, often set in similar backgrounds and landscapes, and this successful series continued until the late 1990’s. After a studio residency in Italy in 1998, and the final series of Renaissance inspired dress paintings, Strampp began to deconstruct earlier work, often reworking a smaller detail into a larger work in its own right, such as a textile detail from the dress, or a background detail into a major landscape.

Today Strampp’s new work takes another look at the horse and the landscape, in a quieter and more contemplative manner, together with the use of a limited palette. Her work continues to explore the intangible and evocative, that communicates before it is understood, and the importance of and relationship between scale, surface and the poetic image through a method of layering and reduction that reflects the experience of connection, through history on either a personal or broader level. Subject and shadow are indeterminate, and the viewer is drawn into the work to decide between what is ‘real’ and what is not. More importantly, it is hoped that the viewer will experience a connection of experience through the work.This new body of work will be exhibited later in the year as part of her Master’s degree submission.

Click here to view the exhibtion.

Images (left): Stags, 2009, oil on linen, 101.5 x 101.5 cm

(right): Winter, 2009, oil on linen, 152 x 152 cm

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