1999

Richard Dunlop’s show at Ray Hughes Gallery gently envelopes you as you walk in, inducing a mild, pleasurable sensation of which Matisse might have approved. The overlay of lianas dividing the surface into Matissean arabesques works well, as do the fine lines etched into the leaves with a nail.” – Sebastian Smee, 1999

“Since 1992, I’ve strived to conceive images which I regard as a fresh contribution to the Australian landscape painting tradition, drawing on ‘Asian’ verticalised views of landscape rather than a rather hackneyed European panoramic view. So many of my pictures are intended to be ‘read’ from the bottom up, and with a tension between macro view and micro-details like the best of neo-Romantic painters or 19th century botanists. But it’s not an exclusive interest. I dislike artists that have as an overarching goal the creation of a strong ‘brand’ which taps some current fashion or pot of money. The best painters in history ignored that stuff, maintaining long-distance eyes both to the future and past. The sediments of time revealed their voices to be almost inadvertently distinctive of their age.” – Richard Dunlop, Catalogue for Hinterland, Ray Hughes Gallery, 1999

“Mondrian died in New York in 1944 at the age of seventy-four, before he could finish his Victory Boogie-Woogie. The highest price he ever received was $600 for Broadway Boogie-Woogie… Out of the exhibition of deKooning’s Women, only one or two sold, and those for around $1800. Pollock never enjoyed the sweet smell of success; an eighteen-foot painting called One was sold in 1952 for $8,000, which was to stand as the greatest amount we received for a Pollock during his lifetime.” – Sidney Janis, The Art Dealers

“A line that at once describes the image, also profoundly floats above the image, the eye constructing form and add detail, but the line continuing to live by its own rules.”Murray Bail

“I think of Richard’s early work as quintessentially “Queensland”. I cannot think of anyone who has captured Queensland better. You walk into one of Richard’s pictures from that period and you can sense your body dissolve into that hot tropical air of Queensland, remembering the heady summer scent of frangipani and gardenia.”Stephen Lees