Up and under 2015 oil on canvas 1100cm x 1800cm
WED 28 OCT - SAT 14 NOV 2015
OFFICIAL OPENING: Special Sunday opening, 1 NOV 2-4pm
Houses, hills, parks, people, cars, roads, our coastline and our sea – In this city's side is where you will see the suburbs captured on canvas by Newcastle based artist, Paul Maher. In this city's side starts at Gallery 139 in Hamilton on October 28 and runs until November 14. Maher has been translating suburbia into figurative and landscape paintings for over 30 years and in this new exhibition viewers will be delighted to find many familiar Newcastle scenes captured in Maher's unique and often playful painting and drawing style.
Maher can be found most nights in his home studio, canvas on the ground and a long handled paint brush in hand, making wide painterly gestures across the canvas, painting in the water or making delicate marks that will eventually turn into houses on a hill. His palette is generally made up of muted shades of orange, green, dusty browns and blues, sometimes there is a vibrant ultramarine blue or canary yellow and he will cleverly leave some bare canvas to add another colour change. His people are you and me, the dog is your dog and the kid on the skateboard is your kid. Maher has been drawing from life for so long, that it has now become second-nature to him and it translates directly into his paintings. This commitment to drawing can be found on his studio floor, where you will find piles of journals filled with pencil sketches from as early as the 1990's up to now. In this city's side might be made up of the streets and hills of Newcastle, but the paintings could really be of any coastal Australian city. Novocastrian’s will be familiar with the glasshouse in Maher's “Piano woman” but realistically the houses in this drawing could be from any Australian city, the trees could be from any Australian state and that lonely piano woman could be anyone of us.
While Maher is an artist that paints what is around him, his works reflect a wider Australian conscience. In this city's side is shaping up to be exciting exhibition of paintings, drawings and printmaking,
Paul Maher: Visualising suburbia
By JIM KELLAR | Oct. 23, 2015, 9:30 p.m | www.newcastleherald.com
Suburbia Captured In this city's side
Hunter Lifestyle magazine, Edition 76, October/November 2015 | www.hunterlifestyle.com.au
ART: Budding views on Chris Capper's motif
By JILL STOWELL | Nov. 6, 2015, 9 p.m.
NOTHER significant one-man show at the moment finds Paul Maher exploring more deeply the urban landform interface at Bar Beach, leading up to the striking fin of the headland above.
At his last exhibition this was the subject for many paintings in muted colours. Now he takes the subject into more dramatic contrasts with experiments, exploring the potential not only of stronger colour but also using watercolour, etching and even digital print.
In combination with large oil paintings, the suggestion is of work in progress. So too is the introduction of house interiors and figures, including a theatrical woman and grand piano. The inventive blocks of black-outlined houses form an increasingly dramatic contrast to the bare slopes nearer the sea.
Paul Maher used to paint the figure. Populating his chosen landscape has worked so well that he has been selected as a Kilgour Prize finalist.
Female gymnasts and pianists are not the only possible subjects, though they work well in a group of ceramic figurines.
At their best, the works in this exhibition at Gallery 139 until November 14 have a vibrant rhythmic presence, indicating several potential new directions in this persuasive re-imagining of our familiar Newcastle.
Up and Under oil on canvas 1100cm x 1800cm
A room of one's own (The Large Glass) oil on board 122cm x 81cm