4 November – 2 December 2023
Fourteen Stations 2023 oil paint on gesso ground 1240 x 1055mm
Tony Lane's paintings resist casual interpretation. The work is complex, the symbols elusive. All paintings are abstract, even representational ones. The elements of a painting are symbolic, a kind of shorthand, for the artist’s concerns. Indeed, the paintings appear to have a fluidity of meaning, an afterglow, there are recognisably New Zealand volcanic cones, mountain ranges, barren hills, and yet there are also distant echoes of early Italian primitivist art. The hills and ranges can run along the base of a painting, then be repeated several times higher up, acting as dividers, separating one world from the next. But at all times there is an underlying sense of both strength and fragility, of a quest, a reason for us to see these paintings as something beyond our immediate experience, to see the deeper mystery of our shared existence.
All the Days 2023 oil paint on gesso ground 950 x 1650mm
