BLUE | Ken Knight, Mitsuo Shoji, Phil Stallard

An impressionist ‘plein-air’ painter, Ken’s work is charged with a freshness and spontaneity that cannot be created in a studio. Ken approaches the landscape with a contemporary boldness. His use of textural oils applied by swift palette knife gestures and energetic brush strokes are highly responsive to the scene in front of him. The result is a painting which offers something a little different each time it is viewed. Up close, his paintings are brilliantly abstract - a myriad of brushstrokes and edges of thick paint - but stand back a few paces and they resolve into a landscape of texture, mood, time and place which shifts slightly with each viewing.

Mitsuo Shoji left Japan at 26 and taught, exhibited and lived internationally for almost 50 years. In this context he sees the raw invention of his work born of the tensions between deep cultural heritage and the freedom to push his medium further outwards. Noted as a monumental force in Australian ceramics, Mitsuo Shoji uses dramatic scale and deft brushstrokes to make objects that are as meditative as paintings and as imposing as major sculptures. The “Kaze” series has been recognized globally as an important body of work embodying gesture and resonant form. Works in this series have a depth of glaze and boldness of execution that wrestles between compressed humility and energized expressionism. On every piece, the hand of the artist is present, rushing through like a sculpting fall of water. His innate restraint is also there, paring down the elegant lip of a vase or evoking ploughed earth with the raw edge of fired clay. Sometimes his painting looks like rivers of crushed glass glaze and other times the impact of traditional Japanese brushes on the finest porcelain absorbs like the strokes of a Koan on rice paper.

Describing himself as an “Emotional Abstractionist”, Phil Stallard dedicates himself to creating exuberantly coloured paintings with Sydney centric iconography. The theme of water has been a prominent reference point for Phil, of which he further draws upon personal memories of Sydney and the Hawkesbury. With an aptitude to push the genre of landscape painting through an interplay between abstraction and realism, Philip’s strength is found in the ability to balance spontaneous painterly marks with careful consideration for geometric compositions. There exists a playful element to each work, whether it be the strength in colour that radiates excitement or the presence of circles, hearts and numbers, which offer a sense of humanness to each piece. “My work has echoes of improvised jazz, where the artist interprets compositional themes through the act of painting. The result is carefully thought out but with spontaneous elements that give the painting vitality and life. The spontaneity is practiced and repeated until the gesture has the energy and balance that the painting needs.” – Phil Stallard