installation view

WED 5 AUG - SAT 22 AUG 2015

OFFICIAL OPENING: Saturday 8 August, 2pm

Since late 2014, Newcastle artists Dino Consalvo, John Earle and Peter Lankas have been meeting mother nature before she breaks. They have been ritually checking the paper and arranging days in advance when and where they will meet with their paint brushes, canvas' and sketchpads before dawn. They set-up in the low light before the sun raises itself above the far horizon ready to capture in paint the first rays of the day on the edge of the ocean. 

It's a marvellous sight to behold, these three dedicated artists whose painting styles so unique to each artist but whose approach to artmaking is surprisingly similar. Probably the most recognisable name to most readers will be John Earle whose paintings are often so hyper-real that it can be hard to tell if they are, in fact a painting, and not a photograph. This makes Earle a painter with keen eye for detail whose brushes are almost an extension of his body. There is no-nonsense in a John Earle painting. Earle translates the beauty of the landscape in front of him directly onto his canvas with precision and unapologetic accuracy. Peter Lankas on the other hand, is an impressionist. A finalist in last year's prestigious NSW En Plein Air Painting Prize and as we speak one of Lankas' paintings is being considered for a place again in this year's finals. Lankas is a master mark maker, combine this with his astute knowledge and experience with colour theory, his dawn paintings and drawings are transcendent and upon viewing them an almost religious experience. Then there is Dino Consalvo who met Lankas when he returned home to Newcastle in 2012 and started attending Lankas' weekly Life Drawing classes at Newcastle Community Arts Centre. The pair shared a passion for drawing and 'en plein air' and have become firm friends and painting comrades. They have already exhibited night paintings together in 2013 at Art Systems Wickham, another Newcastle gallery. Consalvo's painting style sits somewhere between Earle and Lankas. While his work is highly realistic and certainly demonstrates his draughtsmanship like Earle, in a Consalvo painting, brush strokes and applied paint are left on purpose like Lankas. Consalvo's colour palette is often darker than both Earle and Lankas, his world is dark and moody and one not to messed with.

A new dawn for local artists
Three local artists have brought a series of magical sunrises to life through art.
by Robert Virtue | 5 August, 2015 12:53PM AEST | 1233ABC Newcastle 

Newcastle artist's dawn work on display at Gallery 139
By MARK CONNORS | Aug. 11, 2015, 10:31 a.m. | www.newcastlestar.com.au

Inspiration at first light
By UNA REY | Aug. 14, 2015, 9 p.m. | www.theherald.com.au