…the painting simultaneously does so many different things, exquisitely orchestrated to the finest pitch, that you can feel exhilarated, drunk, as you stand before it.  You do feel intoxicated, or at least pleasurably seasick, because you are immediately plun

Tim Maguire is well known for his large-scale paintings that depict cropped, macro views of flowers and plant-life. This UK based Australian born artist is credited for taking the established genre of still-life painting in a contemporary direction – one that considers the realm of digital i

In the past decade Del Kathryn Barton has become one of Australia’s most recognisable and collectable artists. Born in Sydney in 1972, Barton graduated from the University of NSW with a Bachelor of Arts in 1993. She won her first Archibald prize in 2008 for her self-portrait with her two chi

The death of Robert Dickerson in October 2015 took many people by surprise.  It was not that his death at the age of ninety-one was particularly unexpected, even if he had been in robust health for the preceding few years, but it was because Dickerson was a maverick and unique figure in

If any proof was needed of the current place of Charles Blackman in the Australian art world, one need look no further than the record of art auctions over the past four decades. Blackman sits on top of the card for the number of appearances in Australian art auctions, just topping eight tho

Fred Williams’ deliberate yet vivid depictions of the Australian bush are the product of his truly unique approach to landscape. In contrast to the Antipodeans (from which he was famously excluded), Williams was less interested in the mythologies of Australia’s past than in observing and abs

Over a period of about four years in the mid 1960s, Fred Williams produced the breakthrough paintings on which his reputation rests as the most important Australian artist of his generation. In the following years he consolidated the experience and technical gains made over his lengthy years

The Shoalhaven River was a continual source of inspiration to Arthur Boyd and, looking back over the artist’s vast body of work, formed a major part of Boyd’s oeuvre. The Shoalhaven region, on the south coast of New South Wales, has historically been an area favoured by artists because of it

David Boyd was a prolific artist of extraordinary skill, compassion and humanity. Born in Melbourne in 1924 to artists Doris (1888-1960) and Merric Boyd (1888-1959), whom this painting depicts, he grew up in a milieu of gifted artists where he learned creative skills, including pottery, pain

 ‘… In the growth and transformation of its myths a society achieves its own sense of identity… The ways in which a society images its own feelings and attitudes in myth provides him with one of the deepest sources of art.’¹

One of the eight Melbourne painters to jo