Dick Watkins

DICK WATKINS

b1937

lives and works in Sydney

Slow train 1986

acrylic on canvas

152cm x 180cm

Acquired in 1997

As one of Australia's most renowned abstract painters with a career spanning over fifty years, Dick Watkins is a stylistically eclectic artist making his work difficult to classify in terms of a single genre; abstraction is the only constant.

He slips effortlessly between styles, ranging from neo-Pop to hard-edge, to action painting, figuration and to gestural abstraction. He references material such as literature, music and art history. He also cites influences such as cubism, Picasso and the American abstract expressionists, in particular Jackson Pollock.

Despite first appearing deceptively simple, Watkins' enigmatic paintings evolve from carefully choreographed visual and academic compositions. Colour is an essence of his painting, dictating the fluidity of line, form and content. The paintings not only communicate surface physicality in their scale, but also the act of painting, illustrated in the expansive reach of the artist's eye, arm and body.

Source: Liverpool St Gallery, Sydney

© Dick Watkins