David Kirk’s new exhibition of paintings is a review of his work from 2025 and 2026.
Kirk majored in Painting and Drawing at the City Art Institute Sydney Australia from 1982 to 1984. His first solo exhibition was held in1991 at the Julie Green Gallery Sydney. Since then he has exhibited in solo and group exhibitions.
Kirk works in his own painting studio, a former millinery in Leichhardt in Sydney’s Inner West, making the Shop Gallery on Glebe Point Road a perfect venue for his show. The Shop Gallery facilitates connection between the artists and public of the Inner West and inner city; it also has generous volume and height very similar to his studio where these dynamic works were painted.
His new exhibition focuses on respecting our natural environment. The new paintings are landscape-based colour compositions and improvisations inspired by the landscape of Far North Queensland, from the Daintree National Park to Four Mile Beach in Port Douglas.
Kirk’s new paintings have evolved over the last two years and include imagery painted in a muscular, painterly style from the Daintree National Park around the Mossman River and also from his dawn drawing sessions which produce the essence of the seascape paintings from Port Douglas.
A feeling of contriteness is evoked in the works about the river and the forest in the Daintree. Sorrowful expression combines with the natural power of the river, symbolic of society finally understanding the impact of climate change: remorseful but hopeful in appreciating the beauty and life-force of the subject matter, the massive coloured rocks bobbing like the heads and souls of the gone but not forgotten protestors of the early 1980s who saved the Daintree with their blockade.
The paintings and river are brought to life through symbolic colour contrast, imbuing the paintings with awe and optimism.
The sea paintings from Four Mile Beach at Port Douglas depict glimpses of the dawn and sunrise captured from the initial drawings produced on the beach at dawn in glaring sun, cloud cover or rain. There is a subliminal aspect to these works, staring out to a sea of contemplation. The turning of mood via light and tone and changing colour is expressed in the balance of composition and colour, sorrow and happiness.
David Kirk Paintings 2024 -2026 opens on Friday June 19 and runs through to June 30.