Recent Works

By Andrew Frost

At 85 years old and still exhibiting, it’s amazing to consider just how long John Olsen has been working.  Since the 1950s Olsen has elaborated a unique painterly vocabulary that has evolved over the decades into a loose, gestural figuration, with rich abstract elements, and some recurring motifs, such as the jumping green tree frog.  For Recent Works, Olsen Irwin Gallery presents a series of works on paper and three large canvases, and all the hallmarks of classic Olsen are here.

The canvas Lake Alexandra – The Barrage is a classic Olsen landscape. The better part of the canvas – about ⁷⁄₈^th of it – is dark brown ground with a strip of yellow that might be the sky at the top – over which Olsen has layered knots of blue and white lines that gather into shapes suggesting birds or figures. This apparently loose but precise approach to picture making run throughs the whole show as lines and colours converge into an object – say the jumping fish of The Bouillabaise or the return of the frog in Morning at The Lilypond – works which show gusto and an undeniable joy de vivre.

Until January 25

Olsen Irwin, Paddington

http://www.timolsengallery.com/pages/exhibition_layout.php?exhibition_id=464

Pic: John Olsen, Lake Alexandrina: The Barrage, 2006. Oil on canvas, 137x153cms.