Giles Hohnen

2012#9 (Road Picture)

oil on linen H101 W101                     Photo: Victor France

2012#8 (Road Picture)

oil on linen H101 W101                    Photo: Victor France

2012#7 (Road Picture)

oil on linen H160 W160                   Photo: Victor France

2012#6 (Road Picture)

oil on linen H61 W61                    Photo: Victor France 

2012#5 (Road Picture)

oil on linen H101 W101                   Photo: Victor France

2012#4 (Road Picture)

Oil on Linen H101 W101                     Photo: Victor France

WEST COAST ABSTRACT-PERTH GALLERIES, JUNE 1-24

Making Light

Ruth says “I hate men’s cooking”.  I reply that my husband fancies himself a sort of chef.  Trevor says we better eat the eggplant or he’ll have to.

Highbrow chit chat.

One of Trevor Vickers’ paintings hangs in our house, not far from where a work of Giles Hohnen’s also hangs. In the intimate context of our small house there’s little interest in comparing their qualities: I’d rather fall into the spell of one or the other of them.  But later this month at an exhibition of these two plus the painter Robert Dorizzi, comparisons may be inevitable.

All three are ‘abstract’ painters, a very loose term for what may at first glance seem to be work that lacks a recognizable reference.

Giles draws on remembered images of passing landscape (city-scape, suburbia-scape, bush-scape) to create layered waxy ‘images’ that shift between full frontal composition and soft uncertain depth.  The colors darkly glow.  American painter Mark Rothko achieved a similar ‘watching-the-coals’ effect on a much larger scale…minus the gravity.

Trevor’s paintings also move slowly, and at first have a dominant insistence as simple as the doors and windows of your house.  Of course there is nothing really simple in that at all, and given the chance of a gaze, his carefully scumbled rectangles of Matisse color shift forward and sideways. No windows here: these are the sliding, floating screens of Kabuki.

Dorizzi is obsessed with patterns of light and shade and isn’t at all afraid, for instance, to spend hours and hours using graphite to reproduce the striped sunlight falling on a venetian blind.  His titillating patterns on canvas use precision-mixed colors that practically deny flat surface to gorgeous subtle effect, and are again deceptively abstract.

Back at the party and listening to Chris’ favorite radio station on the transistor, a Chet Baker song floats through the garage.  It’s raining. Giles has a cold.  Penny’s hot.  Thank goodness Eveline thought to bring snacks.  And whether we’re talking mature artwork or parties, if you give them a chance, each will establish its’ own boundaries, its’ own references.

C.Wells 2012

“West Coast Abstract” is on at Perth Galleries June 1 - 24, 2012

Trevor Vickers' Studio in Hamilton Hill

R J Dorizzi in his Midland studio

Giles Hohnen's White Gum Valley studio

2 more Frank Morris paintings at the Galerie Dusseldorf show

L: hum7 2011-2012 R: hum 5 2011-2012