Featured Painter of the Day: Rick Amor

Rick Amor (born 3 March 1948) is an Australian artist and figurative painter. He was an Official War Artist.
His work borrows heavily from the pictorial inheritance of Symbolism and Surrealism. There is always a poetic mystery and sense of menace, even in apparently journalistic work, such as the East Timor paintings. His major themes are the solitary watcher, figures at twilight, the vast emptiness of urban spaces and quiet mysterious interiors. His works resonate with powerful symbolism, and his landscapes in particular are full of disquieting atmosphere, with objects bathed in half light and shadows..

Sebastian Smee, a reviewer of Amor's 2008 retrospective exhibition at Heide Museum of Modern Art, concluded that he was

“	convinced not only of Amor's singularity in contemporary Australian art – there is really nobody like him – but of his importance. His commitment is unmistakable, his intelligence acute, and his best images impossible to forget. “

Since the early 1990s, he has also incorporated sculpture in his repertoire, generally bronze figures which he moulds at home, then has cast in foundry using the lost wax method. The National Gallery, Canberra, has purchased a two-metre-high bronze sculpture of a dog – "a made-up dog, a survivor".

Rick Amor select paintings:


Sources: Wiki, National Portrait Gallery

Rick Amor Official Site - http://www.rickamor.com.au/