Chris Gentle’s exquisite line work and colouration continue to draw respect from the art community. Born in the UK in 1939, Gentle studied painting, drawing, sculpture and lithography at the West Sussex College of Art and then art education at London University. In 1965 he travelled throughout Europe, the West Indies, Canada and the USA before settling in Australia.A lecturer in Visual Arts from 1969 and 1994, Gentle was Founding Director of the Ivan Dougherty Gallery. With more than forty exhibitions to his credit, various residencies including the Royal Botanic Gardens and Hill End, his work is held in many public collections including NGA, Australian National Portrait Gallery and the Art Gallery of Queensland.

Chris Gentle has written and published numerous articles and essays on art and artists. These include ’Contemporary German Drawings’ Art & Australia, November 1983; and ‘Reflections and Metaphor’ Art & Australia, March 1986. He was one of three authors for the Craftsman House monograph ‘Alun Leach-Jones’, which was published in 1988 and reprinted in 1995.

“I have always been intrigued by the expressive power of mark making, and this applies equally to the graphic drawing mediums, or to paint. The formal qualities of tone and colour are evocative, of course, but for me, an enriched surface, enlivened with a range of interesting marks, is both suggestive and seductive, and this holds true whether the image is quite realistic or moves into abstraction.”

Chris Gentle