DEAN HOME SEARCH FOR THE PEARL
DEAN HOME SEARCH FOR THE PEARL 17 SEPTEMBER – 10 OCTOBER 2022
Dean Home is regarded as one of Australia’s foremost painters of the still life genre. It’s easy to make bold statements but what underpins this claim?
Colour and chiaroscuro are constant hallmarks, beautiful blooms painted at breath-taking scale, as well as a developing understanding of Chinese culture and the careful appropriation of Chinoiserie. This is just part of the answer.
His dramatic compositions reference his interest in scholarly China, nature, history, wine and an eclectic selection of music and literature. Good wine can be “transformational”. Home recalls how the experience of an outstanding white wine challenged him to push his art, to attempt to replicate the master wine maker by going above and beyond in his own practice. The shimmering of that wine is reflected in and animates his pale peonies. Chinese artifacts link history, culture and current context, each offering a new picture plane, another view or narrative incorporated unexpectedly within the still life genre. His recently acquired antique ink stone contains a hidden poem that exhorts the stone and by analogy, its owner, to do well, a message he takes to heart. (Some stones worked, some untold, 2022, oil on board, 56x56cm).
`Mountains and streams emerge from me. And I, from mountains and streams.’ Daoji (1642-1708)
How did Dean Home arrive at this high point?
Home’s paintings involve multiple picture planes that juxtapose still life, landscape and narratives incorporated in carefully placed artifacts. They are executed on a grand scale with an opulence of colour, the finished works invading the viewer’s space, a theatre stage where the ‘players’ occupy compositions within compositions - in contemporary parlance, the ‘picture in picture’ tool that, for Home, is a blend of East and West. These are works of striking drama, intensely coloured close ups of flowers, predominantly peonies since 2019 when he discovered them in a market in Rome, the tools of his trade frequently occupying the foreground and portrayed in dramatic perspective.
“The ‘pearl’ is a nexus of ideas from my Asian studies,” says Home. “Virtue, wisdom and the embodiment of an accretion of values around a physical or real point. Just like a painting might be.”
It’s been a journey of over thirty years since he embarked on his career as a professional artist in Western Australia. His love of literature, music and philosophy have been constants on that journey. Home recalls his “baptism into the Baroque” on his first trip to Rome. It was and remains a revelation to him. Caravaggio’s rich palette, chiaroscuro, dramatic lighting and highly glazed surfaces, were intoxicating stimulants. Like Caravaggio, Home prefers to work quickly, frequently without preparatory drawings and directly onto the support.
Home extends scenes within the objects, frequently using his own imaginings, reflecting his love of rural and unspoilt countryside. “I still love fishing and observing nature. I like cultures that preserve the forest and allow it to be appreciated.”
For Home, the journey of going to new places is irresistible. “Occasionally it leads to something extraordinary that translates into renewed sensuality in the paintings. The works incorporating tea caddies are examples as they always bring to mind stories of leaving familiar places, like home, and venturing out into the world.” (Starting on the journey, 2022, oil on board, 104x122cm).
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN
paintings are often sited within a garden. Gardens are select, physical spaces, lived in and enjoyed by man, beast or bird; but for Home they also represent the mindscape, the garden of ideas and all sorts of things may enter the garden. The foreground brush handles, gaudy and outlandish, echo the musical rhythm of Miles Davis, making a visual song with harmony and counterpoint at play. (At play in the garden 2022, oil on board, Undoubtedly120x145cm).
Home’s works are charismatic. “Wild blossoms from the dark mountain”, the biggest painting in the show, showers the viewer with oversize blooms that burst from the brooding surrounds, the colours vivid and saturated, enhancing the fragile delicacy of the petals that reveal temperament and mood. The composition is stripped back to essentials, the eye drawn beyond the blooms to the bowl looming from the darkness, where the swirling pine trees conjure old dragons, or old poets. The feminine and masculine balanced; an important outcome.
Search for the pearl Oil on 180x180cmboardHome’s
“My aim is to make paintings that will also be of interest in 100 years plus. I want to see my work progress, see it move along through references to the past, through embracing aesthetic and spiritual barriers to arrive at new destinations.”
“You think about your interior self as much as what you’re seeing; it’s a cross-pollination. I find the small 17th century Dutch painting, ‘The Astronomer’ by Johannes Vermeer inspiring with its beautiful depiction of contemporary life. Housed in the Louvre Museum, it continues through the centuries, as compelling now as it was 350 years ago.
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
Red peonies across the blue stone river Oil on 180x180cmboard
Starting
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
on the journey Oil on 104x122cmboard
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES Peonies at the river gate Oil on 104x122cmboard
At play in the garden Oil on 122x145cmboardDEANHOME/SEARCHFORTHEPEARL LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
AUTUMN POOL
My body’s idle, doing perfectly nothing, and mind thinking perfectly nothing, now more than ever. In this old garden tonight, I’ve returned to my autumn pool, shoreline dark now birds have settled in, bridge incandescent under a rising moon. Chestnut scents swell, adrift on a breeze, and the cinnamon’s a confusion of lit dew. So much solitude in this far end of quiet, an isolate mystery no one finally knows: just a few words haunting a far-off mind, asking why it took so long coming here. Bai Juyi (772-846)
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN
Wild blossoms from the dark mountain Oil on 160x220cmboard
LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
Rich storm, bright stream Oil on 90x80cmboard PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
Moonlight and the misty forest Oil on 90x80cmboard
Some stones worked, some untold Oil on 56x56cmboard PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
Blue feather on the stone Oil on 56x56cmboard
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES Dawn on the river Oil on 110x155cmboard
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES Washed stones, deep blooms Oil on 110x155cmboard
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS: 2022 New England Regional Art Museum, 2017InterconnectedOrangeRegional Gallery, Artist Profile: Australasian painters 2007 – 2017, 2014 Geelong Gallery, Contemporary Art Prize, 2013FinalistCoffs Harbour Regional Gallery Eutick Memorial Still Life Award, Finalist 2012 Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery Eutick Memorial Still Life Award, Finalist 2012 Goulburn Regional Gallery, Australian Still Life -not just another bowl of flowers 2006, 2004, 2002 & 1991 Mandorla Invitational Art Prize Finalist
Nodrum Gallery, A Private View, 1982 &1983 Art Gallery of Western Australia, TVW7 Young Artists Awards, Finalist
DEAN HOME CV
RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 2002-2005 Church Gallery, 20222015-2016-2018-2021Metro2010-2013-2014-2016-2018-20192007-2009-20122016-2018-20202004-2006-2007-2008-2009-2011-2013-2015-Perth.ArthouseGalleries,SydneyPaintboxGallery,CanberraGallery,MelbourneGalleryOne,SouthportLinton&KayGalleries,Perth
TOURING EXHIBITIONS: 1998-1999 Stigma Touring exhibition: UTS Gallery, Sydney; Bendigo Art Gallery, Vic; Latrobe Regional Gallery, Vic; Hamilton Art Gallery, Vic; Drill Hall Gallery, ACT; Swan Hill Regional Gallery, Vic, Flinders University Art Gallery, SA. 1995 Moët & Chandon, Touring exhibition –all State galleries & NGA Finalist,
DEAN HOME was born in 1961, at Busselton Western Australia and studied 1979 -1982 at Curtin University, Perth. He was Lecturer in Drawing & Printmaking at Kalgoorlie College, in 1985 and moved to Victoria to become Lecturer in Drawing, at Ballarat University College during 1986 and Since1987.hisfirst exhibition in 1984 at Howard Street Gallery in Perth, Dean had had over fifty solo exhibitions across Australia. He has been included in over twenty significant group exhibitons.
REGIONAL SOLO EXHIBITIONS: 1992 Bunbury Regional Gallery 2016 Coffs Harbour Regional Gallery 2019 Tweed River Regional Gallery
2004 Fleurieu Penisula Art of Food and Wine Prize, 2001FinalistCharles
BIBLIOGRAPHY
COLLECTIONS INCLUDE: National Portrait Gallery Australia National Australia Bank Telstra BunburyCollectionRegional Gallery Bond AustralianUniversityAcademy of Science Murdoch University Leeuwin Estate Collection NewArtBankNorcia (Mandorla)Collection Perth City Collection Manjimup City Collection Albany City Collection Bayswater Council Busselton Council Collection MLC MiddleHawthornHouseHotel Group, Shanghai Peninsula Hotel, London Corporate & Private collections in Australia & overseas
Closet Circus: works from the Horn Collection 2008, Stuart Elliott & Diane Roberts, McCulloch’s Encyclopedia of Australian Art, 2006, Alan McCulloch, Susan McCulloch, Emily McCulloch Childs Unfinished Journey, 2006, Ed. Ken MacGregor, Artists and Galleries of Australia, Max Germaine, The1990Peninsula Magazine, December 2020, text: Ann ArtistTsangProfile, Issue 37 October 2016, text Ashley TheCrawfordPeninsula Magazine, March 2014, Cover image & article, text: Ann Tsang
A recent project has been the completion of this large artwork, commissioned through Mark Jason of TAG Fine Art, London, to be featured in the dining room of the new, prestigious Peninsula Hotel in London – due to open in 2023.
PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/HOMEDEAN LINTON & KAY GALLERIES
Dean Home: An artist’s journey, 2018, Ken McGregor, Still Life 2021, Amber Cresswell Bell
HOMEDEAN PEARLTHEFORSEARCH/ SUBIACO GALLERY 299 Railway Road Subiaco WA 6008 T (08) 9388 3300 E info@lintonandkay.com.au W www.lintonandkay.com.au
