ABOUT

Gary Christian lives and works at his Black Moss Studio in the Southern Highlands, NSW. He moved there in 2020. He spent from 1999–2020 in his Jamberoo Studio, NSW and from 1986–1999 in his Sydney Studio, NSW. He studied painting and drawing at Prahran College of the Art, Melbourne from 1977–1979.

He is a distinguished painter and sculptor with thirty years experience, has had 25 solo exhibitions, in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Hobart and the Southern Highlands. His work has been hung in prestigious exhibitions and awards and he has undertaken numerous sculpture commissions: including a sculpture commission for Mount Annan Botanic Gardens ’Figures in the Landscape’’; ‘The Atomic Family’ for The University of Western Sydney; ‘Furnace’ for the Corrimal Cokeworks Hundred Year Centenary; a 50-metre-high sculptural façade designed in collaboration with architects, Fitzpatrick and Partners, for 33 Bligh Street, Sydney; and a wall sculpture, commissioned by Multiplex, at No 1 Shelley Street, Darling Harbour. He has won numerous awards including the Hillview Sculpture Award (2016) and the Santos Sculpture Award (2009).

ARTIST STATEMENT

My work responds to the deep connection human beings have with nature; a connection often lost in memory, often existing only in fragments. As cities dominate the landscape, our connection to the natural world diminishes, yet the natural elements are still held deep within our psyche. (In ancient myths we are the land, the earth, the sea, the sky.) I paint landscapes, emotional landscapes, not of the psyche alone, but of the psyche within nature, of the psyche as part of nature. The patterns, rhythm and tone of the natural world shape the images I create; landscapes that chart soundscapes fashioned by calls, responses, denials.

Often, I am described as an abstract landscape painter and sculptor who uses formal techniques and traditional materials to create evocative works of contemporary minimalism. For the paintings and paint-on-paper, scribble and calligraphy are worked into richly hued washes of paint creating improvisational maps of luminous colour.

The sculptural works and Void paintings are evocations of a collective unconscious, a way into a people, place and time; melancholic meditations of mortality, of the beginning and endpoint to our lives, and the deep void that is part of it. I am always returning to the Void. It is one of my constant subjects. According to Zen Masters, the Void is where everything comes from and returns to, and in between is all laughter and tears.

                      

• 
  The Ghost Forest
• 
  Whitewall Art Projects Gallery
• 
  Fort Scratchley Sculpture Show 2024
• 
  Field Trip: Hiroshima and Kyoto 2016
• 
  Field Trip: New Mexico Studio 2019

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