Brett Whiteley was one of the greatest Australian artists of the 20th century, an intense and prolific practitioner who worked across an impressive spectrum of media. He was a draftsman, printmaker, sculptor and writer, but ultimately flourished best at that which in his deepest conscience most cared about: being a painter. Through his various and evolving influences he developed his own distinctive style and discovered that painting was an adventure, a risk, an opportunity to explore his inner world as he saw and felt it. A bit of a surrealist, his portraits stretch and elongate the figure while transforming the head and face into nightmarish smears that would make Francis Bacon jealous. The landscapes of Whiteley are also vast, empty, and mystical, with large washes of color akin to Matisse’s Red Room. When he wasn’t painting his muse, his wife, himself, or the environment, he took to painting animals, birds, eggs, and reveling in their inherent symbolism, recognizing that we, too, are animals that roam this earth, but cursed with the journey for our own meaning and purpose, which Whiteley captured in his visual works of art.
More ArtWork
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Pensive Eye
Contrasting the global, pandemic-enforced trend of living life through technology instead in person, Matthew Couper’s exploration of what social isolation might look like starts from an island in the middle of the ocean. For the artist, desert islands and desert proper are both metaphors for survival and reflect a bigger picture of what survival means […]
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Green Fairy Garden Gate
La Forgia started as a dream of owner Enzo Cinquegrana more than 20 years ago. A sculptor frustrated with the art gallery scene, Enzo dove head first into forging as a method to express his sculptural abilities. When he discovered forged metal could satisfy his need to create sculptural forms and his desire to have […]
