Private Collection, Sydney

David Aspden is considered one of Australia’s foremost ‘colour-field’ abstraction painters. Gaining prominence in the 1960s he continued painting up until his death in 2005. Inspired by colour, music and landscape, this monumental painting is one of the finest examples of the artist’s mastery at conveying the relationships between these themes.

The composition is a visual melody that gently shifts as the eye focuses on the changing areas of colour. Similar to the Jazz music he loved, the lyrical approach to his painting is emphasised in Pennant Hills by the energetic gestural marks that dance across the canvas. Aspden worked cleverly with the harmony and collision of colours, conveyed in the subject work with softs hues of cool mauves and purples juxtaposed with warm tones of pinks and reds.

Private Collection;

Fine Art, Leonard Joel, Melbourne, 22 March 2016, lot 30, illustrated;

Private Collection, Sydney, acquired from the above;

Important Australian Art, Sotheby’s Australia, Sydney, 20 Nov 2019, lot 5;

Private collection, Sydney

1980 saw Cressida Campbell travel to Japan to study at the Yoshida Hanga Academy in Tokyo where she refined her woodblocking and waterpainting techniques. This process, involving etchings on plywood, gentle layers of watercolour and a painstaking printing process lends her oeuvre a depth and refinement that brought her into the spotlight following her return to Sydney; she exhibited at the Hogarth Gallery in 1983 (where this particular work was on show), Stephen Mori Gallery in 1985 and Rex Irwin Art in 1989. 

The Qantas Collection;

Sotheby’s, Important Australian Art, Sydney, 07/05/2007, Lot no. 13;

Private collection, Sydney

Fine art photographer Matt Draper brings his creative vision to existence through unconstrained immersion, revealing life beneath the surface.

By patiently navigating through untamed environments, Draper seeks to better understand each individual species he interacts with. Working with only natural light on a series of single breaths, he manoeuvres concept to creation with minimal disturbance. Draper’s art breaks barriers between human and animal, merging realms and revealing distinct characteristics of unfamiliar physicality and hidden intuitive behaviours — resulting in a dynamic balance of vastness and intimacy.

A Matt Draper fine art print is unique and exclusive, belonging to a signature series of work. Each edition is limited in release, individually numbered, and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity. Focusing on curated exhibitions, Draper is creating notable recognition and expanding his audience, partnering with distinguished scientists and explorers to convey the importance of our natural world through art. Draper’s work is part of renowned private collections, with most editions sold before publicly viewed or displayed.

Les and Milly Paris collection

Roslyn Oxley Gallery, 1999

This distinctive assemblage of retro-reflective road signs epitomises Rosalie Gascoigne’s poetic use of found objects, particularly those containing text. Cut up into fragments, rearranged and composed in a grid formation, the panels display orderly shapes of text against a bright yellow background with light-reflecting properties and a subtle ability to shimmer and shine.

Salvaged from the roadside or from rural tips and depots, Gascoigne used retro-reflective road sign material throughout her 25-year artistic career, which started when she was 57 years old. During this period she became one of the key figures in twentieth century Australian art.

Through her lyrical reuse of materials once part of the landscape, Gascoigne sought to transform her deeply felt experiences of the harsh rural Monaro district where she lived. Foraging its environs for discarded materials, Gascoigne created idiosyncratic works from an assortment of found objects – old wooden bottle crates, weathered fence palings, corrugated iron, worn linoleum – but her reuse of brightly coloured orange and yellow retro-reflective road signs is her most recognisable signature.

Frequently referred to as visual poetry, Gascoigne’s art employs techniques of fragmentation, repetition and juxtaposition – and while letters in her work are not coherent, language is central to the message and layered meaning. Her reuse of the light reflective material is equally important:

“I don’t want it to be dramatically lit, but I do want it to sometimes flash at you, as road signs do, and then go sullen, then flash, like a living thing”
Rosalie Gascoigne, 1988.

Sir James McGregor, Sydney;

Sir Charles Lloyd Jones and Lady Lloyd Jones, Sydney;

The Lloyd Jones Collection, James R. Lawson, Sydney, 9 April 1981, lot 706;

Mr Cecil Green, Sydney;

The Estate of the Late Mrs Marjory Green, Sydney;

Important Australian Art, Sotheby’s Australia, Melbourne, 17/05/2011, Lot No. 82;

Private collection, Sydney

Private collection, Brisbane

Philip Bacon Galleries, Queensland;
Private collection, Sydney

David Rankin, Powell Street Gallery, Melbourne, 1972; Charles Nodrum Gallery, 2011; Private Collection,Melbourne

Note: the ‘Gibbon’ is Gibbon’s Beach, Bundeena, south of Port Hacking, where the artist stayed in the early 1970s.

David Rankin is a New York based Australian artist. Born in Plymouth, England in 1946, he emigrated to Australia in 1948. Interested in the merging of western, eastern and indigenous art, Rankin sees the role of Australian artists as one of authentically and truthfully absorbing those nearby cultures and spiritual beliefs, and integrating these elements into individual works. Throughout the past thirty years, Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions worldwide; he is represented in many of the world’s leading collections and museums.

Collection of Michael Tuckson

Tuckson undertook his final year of study in 1949 at East Sydney Technical College under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme for exservicemen. The figurative works from this period, through to the mid- 1950s, are among Tuckson’s most accomplished – they are raw, painterly and powerful. Each is masterfully constructed. While the influences of Picasso, Modigliani and Klee are apparent, the artist cited his two most inspiring mentors at the time to be Grace Crowley and Ralph Balson. Both these artists taught him briefly with their weekly classes in abstraction at East Sydney

Acquired directly from the artist;

Private collection, Sydney

Recent Nudes, The artist’s studio, 8 Reiby Place, Circular Quay, Sydney, 3rd – 31st October, 1981, cat no. 53