Newcastle-based artist, Paul Maher’s current work, ‘Walking the Square Mile’, expresses a devotion to the familiar as Una Rey, arts writer, curator and lecturer at the University of Newcastle, explains:
“Walking the streets close to his home in Newcastle’s seaside suburbs, Maher sketches the familiar talismans and rituals of his people, the urban tribe in states of casual duty and easy leisure. Skating youth careen, young families picnic, dogs walk their walkers, cycles roll on, each a random idyll from which Maher captures and relates a sense of languor and internal complexity.
Set against the inanimate props of public space, Maher’s choice of players is inspired by our shared humanity and the unlikely grace of community, in spite of its sometimes awkward physical expression. Often seeking out an internal narrative through literature, the artist cites Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood as a soundtrack of omnipotent voices: the dreamers, the hoons, the babes and lovers who animate the painter’s block.”
Newcastle Art Space
31 July to 17 August, 2014
New South Wales
Image: Paul Maher, Bathers Way, oil on canvas, 150 x 120cm
