Chris Gentle learned to ski before settling in Australia in 1967, a long way from the British farming life into which he was born. On his way to Sydney, the artist journeyed through Europe, the West Indies, the United States and up to Whistler Mountain in Canada. On Whistler, he spent halcyon days on the ski slopes. Having fallen in love with skiing, Gentle joined the Sydney Ski Club once he arrived.
Over the next fifty years he would regularly ski the slopes of the Crackenback Range and other notable ski runs in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. The harsh beauty of Crackenback spoke to Gentle, and he spoke back in the language of paint. It is, after all, the language he loves. Over the years, he's endured extremes of heat and cold while capturing the grandeur of the mountains in all seasons and colours. His modus operandi is to make technically stunning drawings and gouaches en plein air, and work them up into oil paintings in his Sydney studio. The finished paintings tend towards the abstract, and some are pure "inventions", as he puts it.
The present exhibition shows the fruits of Gentle's two most recent art tours to Crackenback and its surrounds, including a trip this year to Dalgety on the banks of the Snowy River, and to Thredbo in the Kosciuzsko National Park. Gentle and a group of long-term artist friends bunked down together in a lodge in Thredbo.
Gentle left behind the picturebook beauty of the village, preferring as usual to explore the wild.
In works such as Last of the Snow, dark rocks protrude from Crackenback's snowy mantle. Warm colours like rose and saffron bring the middle distance forward, while monolithic grey rocks anchor the eye in the foreground. Works in acrylic on paper, such as Dark Sentinel or Below the Snowline, feature passages of satisfying abstraction. Rocks and trees are rendered in solid shapes, recalling Robert Motherwell's reductive power.
The Snowy Mountains continue to exert their pull on the artist. Swathed in multiple coats, with a beanie and a good pair of gloves, there's no doubt Gentle will soon return to Crackenback where the timeless landscape inspires him afresh every time.
Elizabeth Fortescue
Journalist and author
Sydney, Australia
Writing for:
The Australian Financial Review
Author of Wendy Sharpe: Many Lives, Wakefield Press, in bookshops now
Abbreviated Biography
Chris Gentle studied painting, drawing, sculpture and lithography at the West Sussex College of Art and then Art Education at London University. He taught for two years in London and then in 1965, he travelled through Europe, the West Indies, United States and Canada before settling in Australia.
He began teaching at the National Art School in 1969 and was appointed Senior Lecturer in Art at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education in 1975. From 1977 to 1986, he was Founding Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery. He retired from the College of Fine Art, University of New South Wales, in 1994.
During the past five decades, Gentle has travelled widely in Australia, observing and analysing the landscape, its beauty and its fragility. His interest has been in the process of nature at work, decay and renewal, and the evidence of time passing. In his studio, the practice of drawing and exploring the nature of paint and colour give him the most pleasure.
Artist Statement
The paintings in this exhibition are the result of many trips to the snowfields and Thredbo in particular. While there, I have made a great number of sketches and paintings in situ, on occasions, braving wind and snow. I am attracted to this part of the country by the granduer of the landscape, the drama of the rocky outcrops and frequently extreme forms of the snow gums.
In the studio I work mostly from memory in an attempt to create more of an impression of, or the sensation of a place, rather than any kind of accurate image. This method provides the opportunity to freely exploit shapes and colours and composition.
Chris Gentle
