Gallery One is set to open Ken Done’s latest exhibition For the Love of Colour on Friday 6 September 2019. The twenty-one strong exhibition features new work from his electric and highly collectible Reef series, and some iconic work from Ken’s personal museum collection.
“I’ve been intrigued by what lies beneath the water ever since I was given a snorkelling mask as a kid. Since then, snorkelling and diving has been a passion I’ve shared with my family, from the Great Barrier Reef, Fiji and far-flung Tahitian atoll Rangiroa.
“The world is my aquarium, and I’ve been expressing my deep love of the reef through painting for 60 years off and on,” says Done, much-lauded veteran of the Australian art scene.
“Over the last decade or so I’ve made a series of very large reef paintings. Coral Gardens V is a personal favourite from my private collection. It’s brought me joy since I painted it in 1998, and at 168 x 183 cm, one of the biggest in my reef series.
For the Love of Colour is an exhibition of twenty-one gorgeously coloured and pretty works which firmly place Ken Done as one of Australia leading colourist painters. His previous exhibition Paintings You Probably Haven’t Seen in 2017 was a sell-out show. It opens at Gallery One on Friday 6 September and runs until the end of the month.
This exhibition celebrates the potent impact of colour on our visual senses by an artist with his own mark and style. Ken uses colour to ‘envelope’ the viewer and engender an emotional reaction. It is the key element to define the moment and feeling of his beloved subjects — coral reefs, the Gold Coast, Sydney Harbour, his garden, the surrounding still life, and figurative muses.
Ken carefully casts colour as the protagonist of his story and through this character the viewer comes to understand and appreciate how this key element is so transformative. The artist generously portrays colour in bold sparkles of light that hit the ocean and bright blocks, loose lines and morphing shapes immersed in underwater coral reefs and jewel seas. Colour acts surreptitiously in and around the subject to reveal beauty, innocence and delight of meeting for the first time.
