Low-flying birds, Morning Colours, near Lisdillon, East Tasmania 2020
oil on whiteboard panel
30 x 180cm

SOLD

Fly Fisher, Meander Valley 2017-2019
oil on panel
126 x 162cm
Glover Prize Finalist

SOLD

Voice in the Wilderness: Northern Tasmania

New works by Richard Dunlop at Colville Gallery, Hobart

“Dunlop’s imagery has an unusual feeling. He is not simply painting a landscape, but cracking it open, his eye swimming in to find the specific components, and how they are constructed. There is a sense that Dunlop is pulling things apart with his work, fragmenting and reforming to understand what it is that he sees.” – Andrew Harper, 2019
“One cannot help but think of Dunlop as an artist with a keen eye for detail and composition, but rather than create work slavishly to these watchwords, he chooses invocation.” – Dr Jonathon McBurnie, Director Perc Tucker Regional Gallery 2018
“The meaning of my work will probably reside in the accumulation of images over time. I’m keen to make things that don’t exist and hope that they resonate with other souls. That’s it. Call it a serialised autobiographical narrative, a visual diary, a personal evolving garden, a small cathedral or whatever ancestors tried to create.  I know that enough people will get it in time.” Richard Dunlop 1992

This second solo exhibition at Colville Gallery finds Richard Dunlop in his third Tasmanian year since relocating from Melbourne (with artist Kylie Elkington) to the picturesque northern town of Deloraine (population >3000), surrounded by world heritage listed regions, the result of foresighted activism at the time. It is the complex relationship between a person and a landscape (and particularly the notion of wilderness versus cultivated land) that was the point of conceptual departure for Dunlop in this new body of work.

The colours and imagery of North Tasmania - the sculptural folds of the Great Western Tiers, the Highland Lakes District, hikers to Cradle Mountain, Liffey (the birthplace of the Tasmanian Greens), the fields of cultivated agricultural markings of the land near Sassafras as farmers use tractor blades as brushes, and the change of season exemplified by the sudden burst of wattle yellows in September in North Tasmania. Dunlop offers both aerial views of his beloved Meander Valley, Lake St Clair, the Highlands Lakes District and river-level images of the sculptural forms of introduced Asian weeping cherries in full blossom.

Dunlop has stated that “the Australian marketplace of ideas for new types of landscape painting is wide open at the moment. Tasmania remains a relatively unpainted territory, in terms of revealing its gothic majesty, sense of deja vu, and otherworldliness.” There are references throughout to the necessary conversation with those who have attempted the same before - Piguenit, Glover, Lycett, Rees, Wolfhagen and others who have attempted to paint Tasmania. This exhibition displays Dunlop’s equal interest in Eastern as well as Western conventions of depicting landscape.

Richard Dunlop has had a distinguished professional practice for over three decades, His work is in the collections of several universities (QUT, CQU, UTAS, Griffith), many other public collections (in some case, in-depth with five or more works), and private collections of the highest calibre, both in Australia and overseas. He has two PhD’s, four degrees in total in educational philosophy and visual art.

Dunlop’s paintings defy easy categorization and constantly seek to hybridise various painterly traditions and categories, particularly landscape, still life and nineteenth-century scientific illustration. He is interested in employing a wide range of painterly strategies to open a picture plane of great depth and multiple perspectives of viewing.

Birds Returning, Lake St Clair, Source of the Derwent After Piguenit in AGNSW 2019
oil on Belgian linen
130 x 200cm

SOLD

September Wattle Burst, North Tasmania 2019
oil on canvas
145 x 120cm
$14,000
Liffey (Birthplace of the Tasmanian Greens) 2019
101 x 101cm

SOLD

Rainy Day All Day, White Weeping Willow, Meander River 2019
oil on board
122 x 90cm

SOLD

Sunset, Lake Malbena 2019
oil on board
18.5 x 180cm
$6,500
Voice in the Wilderness 2019
oil on board
19 x 180cm

SOLD

Woman and Child Walking, North Tasmania 2019
oil on board
18.5 x 183.5cm

SOLD

Woman in October Rose Garden, Longford 2019
oil on linen
61 x 61cm
$6,000
Overland Track 2019
oil on Belgian linen
60 x 60cm

SOLD

Golden Summer, North Tasmania, Hiker by a Waterfall 2019
oil on linen
61 x 61cm
$6,000
Lake in the Central Highlands 2019
oil on board
30 x 120cm

SOLD

Migrating Birds, Great Western Tiers, Near Deloraine 2019
oil on panel
30 x 120cm

SOLD

Sunrise Tide Returning, Port Sorell, Narwantapu 2019
oil on panel
30 x 120cm
$6,000
Birds Attacking Grain, near Deloraine 2019
oil on board
30 x 120cm
$6,000
Sunrise, Narwantapu 2019
oil on Tasmanian oak
20 x 120cm

SOLD

Cloud Drift over the Hill, near Smith and Others, North Tasmania 2019
oil on Belgian linen
13 x 20cm

SOLD

Tractor Markings, Remaining Trees, Beneath Quamby 2019
oil on Belgian linen
13 x 20cm

SOLD

Lloyd Rees Landscape at the Window 2019
oil on canvas
13 x 20cm

SOLD