For a relatively young artist, Max Linegar has achieved many a senior artist’s dream, exhibiting in the highly coveted Kedumba Art Prize, and the Dobell Prize for Drawing at the Art Gallery of NSW on two occasions. The upcoming exhibition represents 10 years of solo shows with Dickerson Gallery.

Using the lush and fertile pastures of both the New South Wales and Victorian coastlines as inspiration, Linegar’s evocative drawings using charcoal and pastel on gesso-primed paper are captured in the transitional and contemplative light of dawn and dusk.These misty and poetic landscape images, through their finely depicted detail and nostalgic hazy quality of gesso, are seductively enchanting, with each drawing successfully capturing the beauty of the surrounding light. Max Linegar’s ability to entice the viewer to enter the meditative and moody terrain shows a perception and maturity well beyond his years.

In the upcoming exhibition Max Linegar has combined rural and urban environments to similar effect. Having lived in Potts Point in Sydney for many years, Linegar has become intrigued by the dark and troubled early history of the inner city area. With subtle hints in each work, Linegar explores the undercurrent of a troubled past through a film noir narrative with scenes set in dark, rain sodden alleyways and a suggestion of mysterious elusive figures locked in illicit embraces.

The images successfully create an unsettling mood of drama and tension, in which the viewer is only given certain pieces of the puzzle. Linegar returns from a recent trip to New York which has provided a similar tone for dramatic and considered exploration. The power of the city and its strong urban history lends itself well to Linegar’s style and it is an interesting counterpoint to the relatively younger history of Darlinghurst in Sydney and the coast. All the works allude to the presence of humanity in the landscape, and in some cases are even more explicit, containing a mystery – an open ended question to the viewer. The unique use of charcoal, gesso and pastel celebrates the sublime qualities of his subject.