RON McBURNIE: A JOURNEY THROUGH SUMMER

opening afternoon | saturday august 28, 3–5pm
exhibition | august 25–september 14

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“When I’m working on an image, I make a point of not photographing anything and instead work directly from life. Then I take my image back to the studio and work on it from memory… almost as if I was trying to remember so that I would never forget it.”

Ron McBurnie has created some quite unforgettable landscapes for his latest exhibition at Gallery@28. Entitled ‘A Journey through Summer’, the show features paintings and drawings made throughout 2009 and 2010 when McBurnie spent a residency in Alayrac, near Toulouse in southern France and another spent in New Zealand.

Kate Hopkinson-Pointer, owner of Gallery@28 says: “Ron is very well thought of in the art world. He’s a master printmaker and a wonderful draftsman – which is what attracted me to his work when I first saw it in the studio of Euan Mcleod.”

In this series of landscapes, McBurnie describes how he would select a view and often return to the same spot to capture the scene at different times of the day, witnessing the effects of light on the face of the countryside. “When I’m working I like sometimes to include small figures in the foreground to give the landscape a sense of scale – but I enjoy a sense of panorama, of space.”

“They really take you to that world of southern France, like a wonderful ‘sigh’ and they’re very romantic,” says Hopkinson-Pointer. McBurnie acknowledges that his work fits easily into the 19th century European tradition of painting and drawing and he claims a particular affinity for British romantic painters of the period.

Using fountain pen either on its own or combined with watercolor, McBurnie’s palette is quite restrained and atmospheric relying on a lot of sepia and black tones. “Although my painting and printmaking is influenced by my immediate tropical environment of northern Queensland where I live, it also draws its inspiration from the different places I visit. In northern Queensland, we don’t really have seasons; it’s just hot or not so hot but in France there are fantastical, seasonal things happening in the lanscape.”

McBurnie’s work is represented in many private and regional art gallery collections as well as in Australian State Galleries and the National Gallery of Australia collection in Canberra. His work featured as part of a group show, Contemporary Australian Printmaking in Chicago and regional and university art collections in Queensland.

McBurnie also teaches, as an adjunct lecturer at James Cook University School of Creative Art where he is artist in residence and as a guest lecturer at ANU in Canberra. A recipient of many printmaking awards including the Mornington Print prize, the Henri Worland Memorial Art Award Warnambool, McBurnie has also won the prestigious Fremantle Print Prize.

For more information or high resolution images contact

Kate Hopkinson-Pointer
GALLERY@28
0402 144 350
khp@galleryat28.com.au

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Gallery@28 Group Exhibition: Erotic
Michael Fairweather: The Salon
Bianca Van Rangelrooy: Mutable Landscapes
Yiwon Park: My Own Pacific Ocean
Donna Smullen: Written on the Body
Chas Glover
Leah Fraser: The Jabberwocky Prayers
Peter Berner
Pedro Vasques: Edge of Civilisation