Following the sold-out success of In Between | The Act Of Painting and Ten Degrees, Australian actor Tim Draxl is returning to the Blue Mountains for his latest exhibition.
Titled Soliloquy, this is Tim’s first series of paintings since emerging from the lockdowns that motivated the previous two, and it celebrates the renewed sense of joy he has found embracing the world around him. In particular, he has been inspired by the colours he encountered on his recent trip to Morocco.
“There are a lot of reds, burnt ambers and ochres,” he says, “as well as blues. They’re a direct reference to all those beautiful fabrics and carpets that have faded with time, and the clay colours of the city itself. The walls in Marrakech are a beautiful, dusty pink colour.”
He came across the blues further afield, while travelling through Morocco. “When you journey through the desert, all the doors are this beautiful blue which is used because of the frequent sandstorms. Blue is the most visible colour, so it becomes a beacon of safety, helping you find your way home, or to shelter.”
After the disruptions of the pandemic and repeated lockdowns, has Tim found his own place of safety?
“I definitely get a sense of security and of being present,” he replies. “There's less looking into the past for comfort. It's more about looking ahead and being present in the moment.”
“When I was able to travel again, I rediscovered the joy of being in a different culture and able to get away from the place I’d been trapped in. Wherever you may have spent the last three years, having the freedom to move is incredibly liberating. Everything takes on so much more weight and the smallest of pleasures become magnified.”
Tim says he settled on Soliloquy as the title of his latest exhibition because when he paints, there is a constant dialogue happening in his mind.
“Of course, I have a constant conversation with myself about why certain colours are selected,” Tim says, “but there’s so much more too it. From an actor's perspective, the interior monologue is something I'm very familiar with, and it's interesting to see how it’s expressed through my artwork. I feel, working on oneself as a human, it is important to have those conversations … not just with other people, but also with oneself.”
Tim adds, “The objective for me is to find my own voice as an artist. It's very easy to be influenced by other artists at the beginning of one’s career, and it’s a constant quest for me to find my own voice as an artist. I'm enjoying the rhythms that I’m finding in my pieces. There's a process emerging, as well as a visual vocabulary which transfers from one piece to the next.”
text: Jansson J. Antmann
