Image courtesy Sonia Payes, Melbourne

EUAN HENG

 

 

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Euan Heng was born in Argyllshire, Scotland in 1945. The artist gained undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art, Dundee and RMIT University, Melbourne. Since 1974 he has held thirty solo exhibitions in Australia, Scotland and Italy and participated in over seventy group exhibitions in Australia and internationally. His work is represented in public and university museum collections in all states of Australia and Scotland. Illustrated essays, articles and reviews on his work have been published in all major Australian newspapers and critical fine art journals. Other activities of the artist have included teaching and currently he holds the honorary position of Associate Professor/ Senior Research Fellow in Fine Art at Monash University, Melbourne. He has participated in visiting artist/lectureships and residencies in Australia and overseas including the Australia Council Residency at the British School at Rome in 1999. In 2004 he received the Australian Council for University Art and Design Schools Distinguished Research Award. Heng lives and works in Melbourne.

Artist Statement

I have always felt a strong allegiance to and admiration for paintings with a certain stillness; in painting, I don't like noise. In your mindís eye, consider the remarkable simplicity and silence of Fra Angelico's frescoes painted in the cells of the San Marco monastery. Most recently I have been emptying out my paintings – no vulgar brush strokes and no detail to distract – just gently modulated pigment to activate flat shapes of colour. I want the visual response to my new paintings to be rapid, if possible, after which the viewer, should he or she wish, can invest further time in unpacking the content, or in discovering the paintings' secrets. By seeking this pictorial suddenness, formally speaking my aim is to avoid the 'expressionistic', and to privilege instead the flatness of the paintingís surface. When I need to imply pictorial space or volume, this can be achieved by the shallow modelling of forms that in part derives from my interest and affection for medieval fresco painting. This intent is also in keeping with contemporary painting practice; it addresses the limits and limitations of the canvas as I consciously fasten all elements of the image to the regular shape of the picture support. A reading of the resultant work functions vertically and horizontally - not 'in' or 'out' and such a reading not only acknowledges but includes the act of painting as subject.