ARTIST NEIL TOMKINS 2020 ARCHIBALD PRIZE FINALIST AGNSW
Neil Tomkins Archibald Success
Success for an artist can be likened to those who depend on the land or sea for a living. Skill and knowledge are required but equally, a hopeful patience for the perfect conditions. It would appear Neil Tomkins' day is arriving as a swell of collectors and critics build around him. In the last week alone he was selected from 1068 entries as an Archibald finalist (with Digby Webster for their collaborative painting Ernest Brothers) and a nearly sold out a 24 piece solo show in Paddington, Sydney.
2020 Archibald Finalists hanging in the Art Gallery of NSW. Neil Tomkins and Digby Webster's collaborative portrait Ernest Brothers
I have long admired Neil's work and approached him earlier this year to stock his paintings. At the time there were a number of pieces to choose from, but when I visited this week, the studio racks were bare. I eagerly poked around the studio asking if I could claim the work in progress still on the studio wall. It seems galleries and dealers have caught on and his paintings are being snapped up across the country and internationally.
I asked if he too senses this building swell, he replied,
'I'm still doing the same thing I've always done but I do feel as though I have cracked something in landscape painting and my audience is responding. I'm literally breaking the landscape into pieces and creating a mental opening for the audience 'cause they're forced to view the landscape outside the usual construct. There's more to this reality than we know, I wanna peel away the curtain and anyone who wants to join me is welcome.'
As a landscape painter Neil brings a genuine freshness and contemporary approach to the beating heart of Australian art traditions, offering a middle ground between abstract and landscape. The recogniseable elements of heritage homes, roads and tall gum trees in his paintings act as markers between abstract segments, split compositions born of photo montage studies and gently psychedelic colour palettes that speak more of the emotions of a place than anything seen by the eye. As James Watkins put it he is 'a painter with a simultaneous eye on the past and future, at the sharp end of (his) potential'.
