Ken Knight Survey Exhibition

Above: Artwork (detail) ‘Dance of the Gums Midday Triptych’

Ken Knight held his first solo show in 1979. This year Rochfort Gallery celebrates four decades of dynamic contemporary post-impressionism by an artist who has devoted his life to landscape.

Painting Plein Air, Knight spends the majority of his year in his “Rovey”, his weather-beaten mobile studio, trekking through the Kimberley Coast, The Pilbara, The Western Districts and his mellow beloved Sydney Harbour. The kinetic relationship between nature, the elements and painting, forge the bedrock of his practice. Knight’s ability to set up his easel and decisively gauge dynamic forms from sprawling vistas, is a skill established by sheer immersion: in paint, in nuanced seasons and in the stripped yet subtle colours that are singular to Australia.

Esteemed in private, corporate and museum collections, the recipient of many prestigious awards and now the subject of this sprawling survey show, Ken Knight embodies the ethos of the quiet achiever in Australian painting. The sort of artist who digs his heels into the earth and paints the terrain until the sun sets, alive to every detail, dedicated to the constant shifts in tone and mood. A witness to the landscape he loves and the life he has built around it.

Exhibition Opening Weekend:
Saturday 6 & Sunday 7 February 2021
Rochfort Gallery, 317 Pacific Highway, North Sydney

Words by Anna Johnson

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