Australian abstract expressionist artist Shane Garton. Works on paper and canvas, acrylic and oils. A contemporary international style emphasising the meditative, spiritual, poetic and human condition. Jazz and poetry a source of inspiration to many of the art works

After years of painting, particularly in the 80's and early 90's, I was known as a colourist. These large canvasses and symbols were influenced by Haiku's and music. I also wanted to do a series on poets, particularly the poems of Charles Baudelaire. For whatever reason, regardless of how much I tried using the symbols and colours, interpreting these poems in the same style and medium as the canvasses was not going to work for me. I was pleasantly surprised to accidentally discover that by using just two colours I could express Baudelaire's poems, as well as a wide variety of moods and issues which confront me daily. S. Garton

.....These abstract monochromatic works have a teeming, churning movement that at times suggests an urban congestion ready to suffocate everything, at times the explosive chaos of a primeval natural world. .....In a few works, Garton uses an expressionist figurative style and a little color to show cityscapes in which building is piled on building, creating the claustrophobia of a Dickensian slum. In the abstract works [the great majority in the show] he tries out two styles. One is a mechanistic one in which a variety of pipe-like shapes are piled on top of each other, entirely in black and white. The other style, an angry scrawling build-up of forms, is more free flowing and includes the use of some gray and on one occasion, blue. It is in the largest works in this style, where he has abandoned any remnants of representational form, that Garton gets what he's after. Here his use of paint is highly effective in creating not just movement across the paper but also an unsettling sense of impending chaos. Despite their dark tone, these works are visually engrossing. Art critic Kate Taylor...The Hamilton Spectator. Canada

Shane Garton
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submission date: April 12, 2002