According to Chapman Gallery Director, Judith Behan, the works are beautiful, exquisitely executed and deeply soul-satisfying.

"The work Inland Sea shows us a man of strength alone in a harsh but beautiful landscape facing our collective mortality, but also reflecting the ambiguity of the colonial heritage and its view of the land.

"The image captures one man's heroism but also his ignorance of the patterns and rhythms of a subtle and complex physical environment."

In an exhibition that spans a wide variety of subjects there are three series that are the pillars on which the exhibition is built. Across the three series, there is a deliberate diversity of style to set up a conversation between the various pillars of the exhibition. They are united by an underlying drive to express the ideas and to revel in the joy of the act of painting - of creating shimmering surfaces and intense resonating painterly colours.

The first, the Inland Sea series, explores specifically an Australian historical context in reference to a universalised Romantic expression of human interaction with the natural world.

The second is the ongoing Ancient Mariner series - based on the Coleridge ballad that describes an environmental fable within which elemental forces punish the wanton destruction of nature's creatures and surrounds, and offer redemption in appreciation of the natural world.

The third pillar is the Harbour Series in which the artist manipulates the tenets of still life to create a narrative that speaks of the interaction between the post-industrial consumerist order and the natural world. Stephen James explores the meeting of forces - the idea of the margin as part of the Australian cultural experience.

"Land and sky, sky and sea, city and bush, there's conflict at the point of contact and it is deep in the Australian psyche," said Stephen.

"Elementals" opens at Chapman Gallery, Canberra, on 8 April. Chapman Gallery - 31 Captain Cook Crescent, Manuka.

Media inquiries: Judith Behan 61 2 6295-2550

Stephen James can be contacted on 0412 560 594

www.chapmangallery.com.au

www.stephenjames.com.au

HOME