Contemporary Art, Investment Art, Ceramics, Sculpture, Art Gallery Katoomba
tel: +61 2 47829988 mobile: 0414 240 664
Contemporary Art, Investment Art, Ceramics, Sculpture, Art Gallery Katoomba
tel: +61 2 47829988 mobile: 0414 240 664
Press release:
2021 gets underway at Rex-Livingston Art + Objects in Katoomba with the first major exhibition of works by stage and screen star Tim Draxl. Known to television audiences around the country for his performance as Dr Henry Fox in the Logie Award-winning A Place to Call Home, Draxl has featured in countless other hit TV shows including Serangoon Road, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries and The Shark Net, while his film credits include A Few Best Men and Swimming Upstream to name a few. On stage, he has thrilled audiences with leading roles in Only Heaven Knows at Hayes Theatre and Torch Song Trilogy at Darlinghurst Theatre Company. Dubbed Australia’s best cabaret artist by the Sydney Morning Herald, Draxl has performed around the world, including at the prestigious New York Cabaret Convention.
Tim Draxl sees his transition from live performing to painting as something quite natural. “Painting is a performance,” he says. “It’s like getting into character. As an actor, you’re not just acting, you are being. You call upon real emotions to create a character. For a painter, the process is much the same. My paint clothes are my costume, my studio is the performance space, and in the act of painting, I am a painter creating emotion through the very real use of colour.”
Draxl took up painting as an outlet for his own creativity, with no real thought of ever exhibiting his paintings publicly. “Not all the works I create are intended to be viewed by anyone else but me, and many will never hang on anybody else’s walls but mine, if they ever leave the studio at all,” he says. “Many exist only fleetingly before I paint over them. Over time, the layers of oil paint accumulate, allowing me to scratch away at them and reveal fragments of the past.”
Draxl’s first major solo exhibition is titled IN BETWEEN | The Act of Painting. “My most recent works occupy the in-between spaces. It’s a space I have often found myself in as an actor between jobs,” he explains. “It’s a space between who I project to be in public and who I am in private – a conscious space in which I make the decision to present as one way or the other. It’s a space between dark and light as we emerge from the COVID lockdown, during which my creativity completely shut down. And in the emerging layers of paint, there is a space between something I previously destroyed and the fragments I can’t get rid of – happy accidents caused by a brushstroke or scratch on the canvas revealing what lies underneath. This act of creating is similar to finding the right interpretation of a character through experimentation and improvisation in the rehearsal room. You never really know where you’re headed with a role until you get there. The act of painting is much the same.”
It’s shaping up to be a busy year for Draxl. In addition to exhibiting in his first major solo show, he will be shooting a new series for ABC titled The Newsreader, as well as featuring in Liam Neeson’s latest Hollywood action blockbuster, which is shooting in Melbourne in January. Next August, he will also return to the role of Zac in Darlinghurst Theatre Company's production of A Chorus Line, which had to be postponed on the day of its premiere in March 2020 due to the lockdown. With a return to work in the acting world, Draxl can see an inherent lightness emerging in his paintings as well. “For a while, there was a period of frustration which was quite dark. There was no light at the end of the tunnel, or any sense of when we would come out of this. Then somewhere in this story there was a moment of light and hope returned, which is where many of the works in this exhibition were born.”
Thank you to DRYRIDGE ESTATE Megalong Valley for supplying their wonderful wines for Tim Draxl's opening.
Tim Draxl, T_O_K_Y_O, 2019, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 102cm - SOLD
Tim Draxl, il innamorati, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 92 x 122cm - SOLD
Tim Draxl, In Between # 2, 2021, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60.5 x 91cm - SOLD
Tim Draxl, Stella Nebula, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 61 x 61cm - SOLD
Tim Draxl, Ghost Light, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30cm - SOLD
Tim Draxl, Suspended in my Disbelief, 2020, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30 x 30cm - SOLD
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