An Exhibition at Red Hill Gallery 13th of May – 30th May 2021.
Herman Pekel captures an artists’ love and veneration of nature in all “her” contrasting glory in this moody landscape rendition. His paintings reveal a complex inner design manifesting in vectored strokes, aptly scratched-in flourishes to perfect the compositional balance and internal pictorial rhythms, a lucidity of colour and surprising tonality.
“Herman Pekel never ceases to amaze and enthrall me with his depictions of the Australian Landscapes. On his travels overseas he manages to recreate the atmosphere of wherever he is painting. I am humbled and honoured to have an artist of Pekels calibar at Red Hill Gallery and I can not wait to unveil his upcoming exhibition in may 2021.” – Margaret Campbell -Ryder.
Pekel has expressed his own personal passion for the environment through his depictions of pristine landscapes and viscous scenes. Over the COVID pandemic, Pekel substituted his regular overseas travels with his ventures into the Australian landscape. While Pekels subject has varied over the course of his career; from industrial scenes to international landscapes, the artists infatuation with the process of painting has been undying. ‘Australia Through the Eyes of Herman Pekel’ is an opportunity to catch a glimpse of Pekels take on the Australia’s landscape and all that it has to offer.
From the age of 12 I was addicted to paint: its tactile quality, the smell, and the feel. Forty years later, I am still obsessed. The subject for me is of less consequence than the simple act of applying paint. As long as the shapes within the picture plane harmonise with one another, the obsession can continue.
Born in Melbourne in 1956 to Dutch parents, Herman showed an early interest in art which led him in his youth to studying plein-air (open air) oil painting, bringing to light his passion for the “freedom of spontaneity” and the rigor of speedily capturing the fleeting glow and illuminating impact of subtle shifts of light across the landscape. Like many young artists of his day, he flirted with Abstract Expressionism before returning to an Australian realist base with a strong painterly technique. An artist of verve and enthusiasm with an expressionist leaning, he is best known for his “wild, impassioned, ebullient and kinetic atmospheric interpretations of the land/sea/cityscape” in oil.
Red Hill Gallery is located at 61 Musgrave Road, Red Hill, Brisbane QLD, and is one of the few galleries in Brisbane open seven days.
