Paul Davies, Sydney

Channelling the bleak panoramic vision of a young David Hockney, Australian artist Paul Davies’s newest series of paintings, on show this month at Sydney's Tim Olsen Gallery, are a contemporary lesson in pure aesthetics.

See more of Paul Davies's new work

Taking his original spark of inspiration from an Aspen holiday magazine, Davies’s block-coloured, eerily empty paintings are a clear expression of the artist’s obsession with line and form.

With a keen interest in the Bauhaus and late modernist buildings, Davies’s paintings offer a striking synthesis between artistic control and abstraction. Constructed using both stencils and free hand painting, Davies multi-disciplinary approach results in overall flat paintings with an unexpected depth.

With 1970’s low slung Miami-style buildings peering ghoulishly out from amid the Peter Doig-esque trees scattering the foreground of the canvas, Davies invokes a disconcerting sense of nostalgia.

Devoid of life, the paintings are lent a surprising warmth by Davies’s striking colour combinations – Hockney he may not be, but there is no denying that what Davies does, he does remarkably well.

29 April 2009 | Art