“Richard Dunlop’s multi-layered paintings present themselves from several perspectives simultaneously. This skewing of perspective brings to mind, among other greats in Australian landscape painting, William Robinson and John Olsen, while repeated motifs seem to nod at the brilliance of Australia’s best indigenous painters. The Zen principles of Wabi/ Sabi are in abundant evidence.” – Iain Dawson, 2006 

“Richard’s work exhibits a concentrated approach to developing an art practice, sustained over a long period. He has consistently carved a unique niche for his work – his painting practice contributes significantly to ongoing dialogues and discussions relevant to contemporary painting although he doesn’t subscribe to any one existing style or theoretical framework. He has developed a unique style while continuing to experiment and extend the boundaries of his own practice. If anything, Richard’s practice is innovative by virtue of its singular focus.” – Alison Kubler, 2007 

“Richard Dunlop’s multi-layered paintings present themselves from several perspectives simultaneously. Capturing the true beauty of organic chaos, Dunlop’s canvas could be painted from within, above or as a magnification of his beloved Australian natives. The skewing of perspective brings to mind, among other greats of Australian landscape painting, William Robinson and John Olsen, while repeated motifs seem to nod at the brilliance of Australia’s best indigenous artists.” – Iain Dawson (Tim Olsen Gallery Catalogue Essay) 2007

“Dunlop draws fresh attention to the overlooked and mundane while exploring themes of opulence, death, transcience, decadent excess and that most maligned and elusive quality, beauty. Undoubtedly, painting and beauty are both here to stay. Dunlop deals with these issues but he is clearly neither a slave to the past or present like the artists he admires, Ian Fairweather, Per Kirkeby, Neo Rauch, Morandi and Titian, for example.” – Professor Mostyn Bramley-Moore

“Unlike many artists who achieve early success, he did not settle into a safe, carefully constructed
manner that invited approval. He kept up the risk, the restlessness, the search for transcendence.”
– Sebastian Smee 2007

 

Richard Dunlop is, at heart, a well-travelled rebel. This is best reflected in his art practice, as he believes “the act of making paintings involves balancing risk-taking with experience”. Dunlop first began taking these risks within his art practice in the mid-1980s – though considerably less experienced – when he “started blurring the interrupted traditions of botanical illustration, landscape and still life with the then moribund tradition of painting”. As he explains, “no-one else to my knowledge was doing it because every element of it was downright taboo, and collectively almost heretical…” – Eric Nash, Curator

In Rainforest and Mangrove (After Fairweather) (both 2008), plant and water forms are elaborated across the painting’s surface, abandoning the logic of a perspectival scene for a meandering brocade of natural forms. Dunlop is aware of the historical weight of painting yet also believes in an essential spontaneity in the studio. “My interest is in the process of painting, with each painting a fresh undertaking, he says. “In the end, paintings make their own reasons for being of any interest over time, both individually and collectively. That’s how they maintain a pictorial freshness.” – Sheridan Hart

“One of our best mark-makers …removes the facts and stuffs the heartfelt painterly gestures in the
spaces left open, like an accomplished surgeon.” – John McDonald

“I get some of my best ideas about gardening while I’m painting, and some of my best ideas for
painting while gardening.” – Richard Dunlop

“The paintings are intensely layered in colour, and light and dark as they are in conceptual meaning. Dunlop demonstrates his command of oil paint in an exhibition consisting of an immense body of work that occupies every corner of the gallery. Less is Morte is a dazzling show of truly beautiful paintings that hang well in the gallery space. Despite the volume of work and its sheer intensity it manages to be neither overbearing nor over-dramatic.” – E. Kirsopp, Melbourne Art Review, 2009

“Soon earth will cover us all. Then in time earth too will change; later, what issues from this change will itself in turn incessantly change, and so again will all that then takes its place, even until the world’s end. To let the mind dwell on these swiftly moving billows of change and transformation is to know a contempt for all things mortal.” – Marcus Aurelius AD 121-180

“Dunlop is an Australian artist speaking softly of the continuity of painting to which we should be paying attention.” – Peter Marzio, Houston Museum of Fine Arts, 2009

“Every artist I talk to seems curious about the images you’ll be making next, the new release records, or must-watch mini-series.” – Smee

“Dunlop displays an ability to express through visual media profound sentiments that defy easy rationalisation. This seems to derive from an intuitive source that shifts from work to work, rather than a consistently regulated one. It is this almost poetic impulse that contributes to the tender beauty of these paintings, which is nevertheless tempered by his acknowledgement of dark, unknowable spaces that exist alongside it. Dunlop cites a drive through Victorian country towns during the ANZAC day period in 2010 as the spark of genesis for this exhibition. As an artist who for many years has sought to reinvigorate the still life genre, witnessing the floral wreaths laid at the base of stone monuments and noting the tension between the ephemeral, decaying wreaths and the solidity of the stone had a resonating impact. These rituals of the living to honour the dead have a kind of didactic function, a way of consistently reminding society about the horror of war in order to avoid its recurrence. Yet perhaps more important to their conveyance of meaning is the tragic beauty encapsulated by the slowly fading wreath, as though by the steady progress of time something once alive is reduced to dust, air and matter. These memorials form a gentle but pervasive metaphor for a greater context.” – Marguerite Brown, 2011

“Nature contains the elements, in colour and form, of all pictures, as the keyboard contains the notes of all music. But the artist is born to pick, and choose, and group with science, these elements, that the result may be beautiful – as the musician gathers his notes, and forms his chords, until he brings forth from chance glorious harmony.” – James McNeil Whistler, 1885

“A real artist is an artist like a dog is a dog” – Advice received from John Olsen

“Using the real world as his starting point, Dunlop plays with images and surfaces in an impressive fashion. The dark, luminous surfaces of some of his paintings in this exhibition also seem to be a nod to the works of Flemish masters. Nature has, after all, a rejuvenating power and you can feel that healing energy in these paintings. These landscapes or still lifes (call them what you will) are derived from the artist’s imagination. Inspired by the natural world, he has manipulated it to his own ends. There’s a reverence at work here, reflected in the titles. But Richard doesn’t approach the landscape with religiosity (he describes himself as “superstitious but not religious”) although there is metaphysical mystery at work.” – Phil Brown, 2011

“I don’t know how you make the paint move and pump with its own blood like that. When you go right into your paintings, it is like you’re stepping behind a screen, and the picture starts again, and it is moving and alive, but it’s not the beer I swear it. I was getting a ‘boner’ in front of ‘The Red Violin’ ” – Ben Quilty, 2011

“There is poetry to the works of Richard Dunlop. His paintings ‘rhyme’ perfectly with nature. A cursory glance would have you believe that they were illustrations of the natural world, but nothing could be further from the truth. He repeatedly invents new stand-alone microcosms. Each work has its own reality and inner coherence which can convince a viewer that they are looking at something they have seen, but it is the artist who makes us see afresh. These evocative works explore the underlying mysteries of nature, decay, beauty, continuity and impermanence. Painting is a natural part of Dunlop’s life, as integral as eating and breathing, so each painting has an organic and unique life of its own, consuming weeks and sometimes months of the artist’s time. These fertile activities can consist of up to 30 layers of paint, before a resolution is settled upon.” – Emily Lynch, 2011

“I like to make paintings whereby people can enter a world, like a great movie can transport you to another place – if you stare (even on-screen) at a pic like ‘Vessel’, or ‘Wild Orchid’ for about 3 minutes straight or intermittently for a while, hopefully a viewer will see the depth and movement and internal order of a picture begin to slowly materialise. Because of the layering of the painting, the appearance is intended to differ according to the light at various times of day or viewed from different angles in a room, as various transparent colours and forms ascend or recede.” – Richard Dunlop 2011

“In other works in the exhibition, Dunlop reveals a much darker sensibility. In the mighty Last Night with a Great White (Two Fish Inside) of 2011, the torso of a shark hangs suspended in a dark interior space. Cut in half the animal’s internal cavity is revealed, in which Dunlop paints two fish laying side by side. The work immediately calls to mind the great genre painting by Dutch master Rembrandt van Rijn, Slaughtered Ox of 1655, held in the Louvre.” – Marguerite Brown Curator MFA

“There is rarely a millimetre of pigment or detail that is not intended to be there.” – Andrea Rosen NY

“Full fathom five they father lies/ of his bones are coral made/ Those are pearls that were his eyes”. – William Shakespeare, The Tempest 1610

“I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.” – Jackson Pollock 1947 in reference to Full Fathom Five

“Dunlop does not work to plan. The picture and the application of the paint is an organic process. He
uses the medium in multitudinous ways, thinning it onto watercolour-like glazes, applying and
removing it, scratching the surface, and often uses his fingers to smear, smudge and blot. He enjoys
composing and deconstructing the image, a little like how the natural world works, starting with a
new life, the proliferation of such and then decomposition. Having said that, there is also often a
necessary sparseness to these paintings, a void among the layers.” – Emily Flynt

“All the paintings are rich interpretations of Richard’s rather organic universe. As the Gallery’s catalogue points out, “Dunlop ensures that his paintings are as organic as his subjects”. The alchemy which occurs in the artist’s studio is what drives, inspires and sustains Richard, who creates his own worlds in his often richly detailed works. All the works are rich and aesthetically pleasing and Richard has no problem with the artistic ideal of beauty. But his paintings are not glibly attractive and they do suggest hidden depths… a world where life, death and renewal are constant realities. And that’s as it should be.” – Phil Brown, 2012

“Whirling Dervishes (Degas Night) is an absolute knockout. Is it big?” – Ben Quilty 2012

“One of the best painters around, with the paint appearing to move, so that you become drawn into the artist’s world.” – Waldemar Janusczak, 2012

“By looking into a painting, we enter a world created by the artist. He [or she] has the power to force us to relive all his/her conscious and unconscious sensations.” – Desiderius Orban

“The Jewish Violin was an image that haunted me for several years. Now I own it.” – Theo, restaurant owner and art collector, Melbourne

“My art, what do you want me to say about it? Do you think you can explain the merits of a picture to those who do not see them? I can find the best and clearest words to explain my ‘meaning’, and I have spoken to the most intelligent people about art, and they have not understood; but among people who understand, words are not necessary.” – Edgar DeGas, 1886

“You cannot change the past, but people are giving it a red hot go to rewrite its history. When returning to re-work a painting after months or years, it hasn’t changed, but you have. You are now in a better position to wrestle and reckon with a vague memory of an experience, and give it better articulation.” – RD

“The transformative qualities of water, from mist to ice seem to provide lots of scope for exploration of landscape painting with shared elements of western and non-western traditions. I’m particularly interested in the visual ambiguity that eastern artists have employed for centuries and I’ve always loved the capacity of calligraphists to summarise diverse emotions in a rapid movement. It is this capacity to be simultaneously expressively violent and thoroughly restrained that interests me” – Richard Dunlop, 2013

“In Wattle and Watercourse (2013) drawing is obliterated; drawing becomes paint; image and substance are one. Interior sensibilities of the painter are exteriorised. This masterpiece is the first Australian landscape where the whole canvas is imaged from one object: the wattle.” – Gregory Breeze