Lot 30

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Olsen Irwin Gallery, Sydney
Private collection, Melbourne

RELATED WORK:
At sea (for Pamela) 2018, acrylic on canvas, 200 x 300cm, Wynne Prize Finalist, 2018, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Tim Storrier has created a body of work instilled with images of life on the land. The four elements: earth, air, fire and water have provided a successful framework for Storrier to illustrate his impression of the Australian experience.

Whilst fire may be his most recognisable element, it is the opposite element, water, that is represented within his most accomplished works. Both elements reveal an untamed power, but by the late 1990s and early 2000s, Storrier was seeking a new direction for his art beyond the flame. Storrier's biographer, Catharine Lumby, notes that these water paintings are some of his strongest to date and mark a painter in full command of his craft. (1) His paintings of vast and deep oceans carry a sense of isolation and vulnerability that only a mature artist could successfully harness.

"In a series of brooding seascapes, Storrier trained his gaze away from his traditional subject matter to the sea and to an entirely different kind of wild vastness - to bodies of water uncrewed and unmarked by anyone who traversed their boundaries, save for the odd scattering of flowers left drifting on the waves" (Catharine Lumby). (2)

Flowers can be thrown out to sea for various reasons including for a blessing, good fortune, or even to honour the deceased as a 'memento mori'. The Scattering displays a delicate spread of flowers gently resting atop the volatile swell of the sea. The building waves threaten the blooms floating precariously - an allusion to our own fragile mortality. Storrier utilised this combination for his 2018 Wynne Prize entry, At Sea (For Pamela). American actor, Lee Marvin, had passed away in 1987 after which his widow, Pamela, had scattered roses and his ashes into the ocean near Cairns near where Lee's favourite fishing spot was located. The gesture paralleled with his experience as a marine during the Pacific campaign of World War II. In 2018, Pamela sadly passed away and Tim dedicated this Wynne prize painting to her.

Whether a blazing sky, a flying paper plane or a wind-swept ocean, the sheer beauty and artistry of Storrier's practice is imbued with poetic resonance.

Olivia Fuller | Head of Art

(1) Lumby, C., Tim Storrier: The Art of the Outsider, Craftman House, Sydney, 2000, p. 145
(2) Ibid. p.144