Graeme Drendel
Graeme Drendel is a Melbourne painter and printmaker whose interest is firmly in the realm of the human figure. His work revolves around the tactile and psychological interactions between the characters he portrays. Born in the Mallee in northern Victoria, something of the small town community and particularly the landscape there have continued to impact on his work. The big skies and the generally featureless landscape provide the theatre in which his ‘people‘engage in their relationships. His work seems sometimes to be almost autobiographical, although obviously imagination and fantasy stretch situations and even the landscape, into the improbable, as the mood of the work varies from that of menace and uneasiness to humour and the slightly bizarre. While Drendel’s paintings are typically populated with a number of figures, his etchings of the past couple of years are generally single figure studies from his sketchbooks or from other sources of interest. Graeme Drendel’s work is widely collected including the National Gallery of Australia, the Print Council of Australia, Darwin Museum and Art Gallery, Deakin University, Charles Sturt University, New England Regional Art Museum, Bundanon Trust and in sixteen other major collections.
A very interesting exposition on Graeme Drendel’s work can be seen on australiangalleries.com.au