BLUE SHIRT, BLUE SKY, 2005
KEN WHISSON
oil on linen
80.0 x 70.0 cm
signed, dated and inscribed verso: Ken Whisson / "Blue Shirt, Blue Sky" / 12/7/05 ...
Niagara Galleries, Melbourne (label attached verso)
Private collection, Brisbane
Ken Whisson Paintings and Drawings, Niagara Galleries, Melbourne, 2-28 October 2006
Ken Whisson: As If, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Heide, 17 March - 15 July 2012, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 28 September - 25 November 2012
Barkley G., and Harding, L., Ken Whisson: As If, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne and Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, 2012, cat. 178, p. 161 (illus.)
'Looking at one of Ken Whisson's works is like studying a diagram of the thinking mind. This is why their schematic forms begin to seem ever more familiar over time - they conjure up experiences and observations that virtually everyone holds in common ... The idiosyncratic colours and raw, insistent marks with which Whisson records these experiences do not completely disguise the nature of each subject. On the contrary, they invite us to interpret these views as filtered through another consciousness. In doing so, we become more aware of the provisional and subjective nature of our perceptions, and the way they are taken apart and reassembled in the mind.
'... Whisson's work is always open to such dual possibilities - to the straightforward recognition of an object, and the wider sphere of subjective associations enriched by memory. This is where a metaphysical dimension may be discerned, because there is much in these pictures that eludes any obvious narrative.'1
1. McDonald, J., 'Ken Whisson: Matter and Memory' in Ken Whisson: Paintings and Drawings 1947-1999, Niagara Publishing, Melbourne, 2001, p. 9