Jackie Anderson

Scotting painter Jackie Anderson has produced works of such fragile delicacy, being so faint and stripped down in colour, that they make one slow down to really look at them.  Ethereal and ephemeral forms, overlapping observations and subtle tonal variations are combined with compelling compositions that seem to capture something of the impersonal nature of urban interaction.

I’ve never actually seen any of her work ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, but I would imagine they could be…well, it’s hard to avoid the word ‘haunting’ really.

If you like her work I’d recommend you check out Nicholas Uribe too, specifically his work from a few years ago.

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Michael Kareken

Finding beauty in the rough and mundane industrial world of scrap heaps, Michael Kareken’s textural paintings and charcoals are worth checking out.

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Nicola Hicks

Nicola Hicks is known primarily for her extraordinarily textured sculptures of animals, people and hybrids thereof.  Here charcoal drawings and etchings have a brilliant balance between rough physicality and disintegrating ephemeral line.

There size is almost overwhelming, yet there is a delicacy in both the marks (despite their display of bravura) and in the material.  Thin brown paper was simply tacked to the wall of the gallery when I last saw here work.

There is some truth in Flowers Gallery’s claim that her work “often combines charm and menace in equal and sometimes devastating measures”.

Gallery

Anthony Scullion

Reminiscent of Giacometti’s paintings, as well as Francis Bacon’s, Anthony Scullion’s figurative paintings is well worth having a look at.

Gallery

Gallery 2

Sadie Jernigan Valeri

I haven’t posted a still life painter in ages for the simple reason that there are so many painters who seem to do identical, technically excellent, but unimaginative still lifes.  Sadie J. Valerie’s experimentation with creating dynamic shapes (i use that word ‘dynamic’ begrudgingly as i hate it and read it far too often, though here it does seem applicable) and lyrical compositions are far more engaging.  Certainly one to watch.

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David Curtis

Landscape painters often talk of ‘capturing the light’, yet few do that so well as David Curtis.

He also does more delicate watercolours.

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Charlie Mackesy

Wonderfully varied, absurdly prolific and imbued with that same sense of the spiritual which Rembrandt’s work possesses, the drawings and paintings of Charlie Mackesy are well work checking out.

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Gallery

Sangram Majumdar

I can’t really put my finger on what it is I like about Sangram Majumdar’s work.  There’s a vibration in the crisp areas of flat colour that come together to form images of an intriguing psychological quality.

Stylistically there’s something of Euan Uglow in the careful delineation and measurement.  But while I often find Uglow’s compositions lacking in anything of interest beyond surface quality, Majumdar’s seem to have a particularly curious atmosphere.

His work in charcoal is equally fascinating.  They capture moments of intense business, but rather than doing so in an ethereal impressionist way, they crystalise them with a variety of sharp clarity and murky obscurity.

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Joseph Zbukvic

Landscapes time.  This time it’s the watercolours of Joseph Zbukvic.  I’ve no idea how to pronounce his name, but I know i love his work.  I hold in high regard any painter who can show the over-painted subject of Venice in a way that makes me look at the city afresh.  He’s not limited to Venice though, with work covering both urban and rural environments.

A sense of atmosphere is combined with visually absorbing compositions, which have a brilliant sense of focus that keeps you looking around the image, stopping here and there to admire the variations between a broad and tight focus.

A low chroma keeps his colours harmonious and avoids the common pitfall of the brightly coloured touristy images of Venice.  Like Whistler’s etchings of the place, one gets a sense of the artist’s fascination with the light around him, rather than a postcard-type image that is peddled to the millions of tourists.

Gallery at Melbourne Fine Art

Gallery at Artists Realm

Gallery at Greenhouse Gallery

Jeffrey Hein

Jeffrey Hein’s work is utterly modern and utterly traditional. Design, colour and focus describe his work fairly nicely. His work consists largely of figures, often in coloured sunglasses, on an abstract background, painted with great sensitivity

Lately his work has been exploring new directions, becoming darker and moodier with less of the early abstractions.

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