| Michael Cusack's paintings take us behind the landscape. His understated approach opens each image to infinite interpretation. In this work we encounter spaces characterised by memory and longing, where the titles hint at the possible significance of vaguely familiar scenes. What they depict however, is a geography of inner experience, a psycholoical topography that each of us carries mapped in our subconscious. His limited tonal palette and minimal approach allows Cusack to concentrate his exploration of this terrain into subtle graphic elements, perhaps rekindling ancient knowledge that has become abstracted by time and space. Drawn, rubbed, smudged or scratched, his gestrual markings interrupt, but are mostly subdued by, nuanced veils of paint. For the viewer, they form the picture's traceries of meaning. They are subtexts to the process of discovery that the artist has invited us to share. |
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| Born in Ireland, Cusack immigrated to Australia in 1982. He lived in Sydney and Newcastle for many years before his recent move to the NSW north coast. Since attaining his diploma of Fine Arts from the Hunter Institute in Newcastle, his work has earned numerous awards. Cusack exhibitis regularly in solo and group exhibitions along Australia's east coast, and is represented in Artbank, the Newcastle Region and lake Macquarie City art galleries, in the ABN Amro and BHP Billiton collections, and in private collections in Australia, Asia and Europe. |
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