Lot 41: BRIAN BLANCHFLOWER (B. 1939)

Canopy XXIX - Palimpsest (Humankind)
signed, dated and titled 'Canopy XXIX - Palimpsest (humankind)/BRIAN BLANCHFLOWER - MARCH APRIL 1992' (on the reverse)
acrylic with powdered pumice, oils, chalk on acrylic ground on laminated hessian
239 x 182.5 cm

Sydney, Annnandale Galleries, Brian Blanchflower - Paintings, 12 October - 6 November 1993, cat. no. 3

Annnandale Galleries, Sydney
Acquired from the above on 24 September 1994

'For me a painting has to add up to an indefinable whole.' - Brian Blanchflower, March 2002

Brian Blanchflower was born in Brighton, England in 1939. In 1972 he migrated to Perth in Western Australia, where he still lives and works, and has established himself for many people as the most important talent to emerge in the visual arts in Western Australia during the last thirty years. His most recent public space exhibition From the Generative Eye: Paintings 1990 - 2001 at the John Curtin Gallery at Curtin University in Perth in 2002 further confirmed him as a towering contemporary talent. Blanchflower had his first retrospective 'Works 1961 - 1989' at the Art Gallery of Western Australia and the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Blanchflower's work has a unique affinity with the land as well as the processes of nature itself. His original approach to materials and the profound scope of his artistic practice have resulted in an oeuvre that has become highly influential to both other artists and collectors throughout Australia. His 'Canopy' series, which now numbers over sixty works, may be considered his 'symphonies' and indeed, at up to eleven metres in length are indeed symphonic in their spiritual effect on viewers. Blanchflower's work is conspicuous in its lack of irony - he goes after the big questions in life and art and our relationship to nature - spiritual concerns - resulting in significant work of substance.

Blanchflower has work in all state gallery collections in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia, as well as important public and private collections in Europe and the USA including the David-Weill collection in Paris, The Museum of Modern Art New York, The British Museum, The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, National Gallery of Canada and the National Museum of Western Art Tokyo among others. He has had eight solo exhibitions at Annandale Galleries in Sydney since 1990.

We are grateful to Bill Gregory, Director of Annandale Galleries for providing this catalogue entry

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