Collection Thirty Eight | John Waller & Marika Varady

My work is derived from the Australian landscape for which I feel a deep connection, and encapsulates a dualistic exploration of the landscape remembered, and the physical process of painting as an ongoing dialogue between surface and memory.
Each of my paintings begins with a drawn figure, over which geometric shapes are then overlaid. Pigments are applied; scraped, daubed, pushed, and stretched, the process a continual act of layering and editing, contributing to a layered aesthetic of space and time.
As a boy growing up in Mildura, I was free to roam under the vast hot sky far away from the irrigated symmetry of the orange groves and out to the windswept sand dunes, where ancient artefacts and the skeletal remains of extinct fauna would sometimes become visible under the constantly shifting landscape. These memories remain with me today and continue to inform my work.
As an adult I was fortunate to have the opportunity to work with the indigenous artists of Lajamanu in central Australia. The experience of flying over the boundless outback terrain in a single engine plane brought another perspective to my experience of the Australian landscape.
Today, working from my Fitzroy studio, I have a wealth of inspiration to draw upon and continue to explore the potent relationship between landscape, memory, surface and colour, how I respond to that, and that others might relate to.

The work of Marika Varady is anti-literal. Her forms could be plumes of flame or moving cloud formations. Her work presents nature at its most elemental and colour at its most elegiac. If the works carry the gravitas of an old master it’s perhaps because of their methods. Reviving the centuries’ old tradition of using raw pigments and various oil based binders the artist makes make her own paints. This allows total control of her medium and this gives her work a glowing, almost mystical element. Smoke and flame are a consuming symbol for Marika Varady, whose plumes of cloud and vapour generate an intense and atmospheric immersion into the canvas. Blending rare pigments into oil to make her own paints forges the alchemy of Marika Varady’s lyrical vision. Hers is an environment of atmospherics that speaks of both fire and water illuminated by light. Marika Varady studied painting in Sydney at the National Art School and later spent two years at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in Germany studying post graduate painting. A professional painter for over 30 years, Varady has participated in over 60 exhibitions both in Australia and overseas, including eleven solo exhibitions. Marika has been a finalist in many competitions including the London International, Brisbane Art Prize, Norvill Art Prize, ANL Maritime Art Prize, Mosman Art Prize, World Year of Physics Prize, Travelling Art Scholarship, Waverley Art Prize and was the winner of the Bondi Youth Art Award. Her works are in various private collections in Australia, Europe, United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, Hong Kong, New Zealand and USA.