Berth of Venus

Artist Statement: I like to give my works titles that have some meaning beyond simple description. This is an obvious play on words, after the Botticelli painting the Birth of Venus. The ship is named Aphrodite, the original Greek name for the goddess Venus, who, as legend tells us, was ‘born of the waves at Paphos on the Island of Cyprus’. The name of the ship and its port of registration spell it out in Greek … along with the usual admonition about smoking.

My current work is in many senses illustrative, with an emphasis on colour and design.
I take particular inspiration from the thoughts of the 1930s American ‘Precisionist’ painter Charles Sheeler, who wrote …“I had come to feel that a picture could have incorporated in it the structural design implied in abstraction and be presented in a wholly realistic manner.” My pictures have recognisable and familiar subjects, but are in no way photographic, rather taking a lead from aspects of cubism, graphic design and poster art.

Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Dimensions: 76 x 101.5 cms
Date: 2017
Condition: New

Director's Statement: Gavin Fry has worked in Australian art for more than 50 years, but only recently has gone full circle to the place where he started, as a practicing painter, fresh out of art school in the late 1960's. In a long career he took many directions, seeking out new experiences and forms of expression After teaching at secondary and tertiary levels, Gavin took to museum work as an art curator and museum director. As a direct result of that work he has become one of Australia’s best known and most prolific writers on art and history, with more than 20 books to his credit. A lifetime of looking at, and writing about art has taken him back to where he started, painting and drawing the world around him in a distinctive and highly personal way.

RELATED SERVICES

If this artwork is SOLD or ON RESERVE and you would like to BUY art by this artist please contact us here. 

If you would like an APPRAISAL or VALUATION for art by this artist please use our online valuation service here.

If you would like to SELL art by this artist please contact us here.