Richard Blundell

Born 1947, Richard has had nine solo exhibitions, has participated in seventeen group exhibitions since 1966.  Richard is the Deputy Director of Griffith University,   Queensland College of Art, (BA Dip; Voc ED; FDIA; MAGDA) and is a practicing acclaimed artist with many successful Exhibitions to his name. 

He was the winner of the Gold Coast City Art Prize in 1985 and is represented in many Corporate, National, and International collections, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Brisbane, Griffith University Art Collection, Print Council of Australia Archives, as well as numerous Private collections.  

His recent solo exhibitions were Ecology of Place and his next solo exhibition followed through with Homelands, a narrative on how the environment is impacted by modernization etc. 

His brilliant brushwork and his sophisticated use of de-saturated colour inform each brushstroke, which is a delight to the senses both visually and ecologically. 

Richard says about his Homelands exhibition:

“Homelands is an exhibition about the impact of suburban living on the landscape … Homelands addresses the human connection to the local environment and conservation. 

Unlike my earlier exhibition, Homelands takes a much broader vision and addresses elements of landscape from the southern points of Mount Lindsay and Mount Barney across to Flinders Peak and east to the Daisy Hill Forest.  In this exhibition links between my personal experience and interests and the landscape in which I live are imaginatively intertwined … a clue to understanding the imagery used. 

While I prefer to describe the works in Homelands as landscapes, some pieces do not comfortably meet expected norms for landscape formats and codes.  The aesthetics for this exhibition has been shaped by visits to the Gallery of Maps in the Vatican Palace in Rome and the Atrium Cupola showing the creation of the world in San Marco Church in Venice … These influences have given rise to Homelands’ circular works where celestial, biological, and political cycles have transformed into landscape defined as time and measurement and as a catalyst of self-sustaining containment. 

Essentially these works are landscapes of material comfort and self-preservation.”