William Robinson: The Painter & the Printmaker floor talk

Join QUT Galleries and Museums Director, Vanessa Van Ooyen on a tour of The Painter & the Printmaker at the William Robinson Gallery.

William Robinson is revered as one of the nation’s great contemporary painters, recognised for his multiperspective depictions of the Australian landscape. While he is most readily identifiable by his monumental paintings, his print works are scarcely understood or fully acknowledged for their aesthetic value and contribution to the artist’s remarkable creative vision. This exhibition provides rare insight into Robinson’s mastery as a colourist and mark-maker by showcasing four decades of printmaking, in particular his lithographs and etchings, alongside major paintings.

From his early intaglio prints, which offer playful character studies of farmyard animals, to the virtuosic landscape lithographs employing up to ten colours, Robinson’s prints span a diverse range of styles and subject matter. While many of his prints reference and even share titles with earlier paintings, the artist specifies that they are not meant as direct copies: ‘I am not turning a painting into a lithograph, perhaps turning some of the ideas in a painting into a lithograph … it is a reinterpretation of it, not the same composition’. This process reflects the greater aspirations of Robinson’s artistic practice — to create a ‘parallel vision’ that transcends mere depiction.

Image credit: William ROBINSON, Summer self portrait I 2004, (detail) colour lithograph. QUT Art Collection. Gift of the artist under the Cultural Gifts Program, 2008.

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