Mixing realism and the abstract, Fred Fink draws influence from the sublime beauty of nature. His romantic oil paintings explore the innate sense of the infinite, showcasing the Australian bush landscape like you have never seen before!
“Fred Fink brings a unique perspective to Australian landscape. Inspired and informed by his extensive camping forays to the remotest reaches of the country, Fred has developed over several decades the bold palette and stark compositions for which he is known and admired. (His work has been exhibited in many solo and joint shows and is hung in private and public collections here and internationally, including the Salon des Refusees, Wynne Prize, Sydney)
His ‘trees’ series reflects a very personal and yet completely identifiable take on this iconic element of our environment. Fred’s eucalypts, angophras and other species cannot be other than antipodean yet the eye goes initially to their unexpected, almost shocking colouring and confronting form and contour. Further examination, though, reveals half-hidden subtleties in line and shadow, in whorls and markings, in the very spaces between the trunks and boughs, inviting us to draw closer as if we might peer through to what lies beyond. These are the sentinels and signifiers glimpsed through the road train dust at sunset, of nocturnal desert wanderings with the campfire glow over the ridge, of rising pre-dawn from the swag to a world at once solid and ephemeral.
Fred Fink’s vision allows us a rare insight into an aspect of the Australian cultural terrain that is easily lost against the spread of the wide brown land.”
