THE SKY VILLAGE

Ken Johnson is one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary painters of landscape and poetic imagery. His works are held in esteemed public institutions and private collections worldwide, including art foundations associated with the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery, the distinguished Penfold family collection, and notable private collections globally.

Having sold his first painting at age 15, Johnson's solo and group exhibitions have since spanned five decades across Australia and internationally, including in Switzerland, New York, New Mexico, Hong Kong, Luxembourg, Italy, London, Norway, Syria, India, Portugal, Japan, Shanghai, and Seoul. His creative journeys cover the vast wilderness of Australia, Europe, and the Himalayan heights of India.

Beyond his practice as a painter, Johnson is an accomplished sculptor and architectural practitioner. Notably, he personally designed and built a medical and learning center in Darjeeling in the Himalayas, cultivating a deep humanistic and spatial vision that continues to inform his artistic oeuvre.

Johnson frequently departs from traditional single-point perspective. As the Milanese art critic Professor Zeno Birolli noted: “Ken Johnson has bent the meaning of depth with his approach to interpreting the landscape and human imagery using lines and insets.”  His paintings often employ segmented panels, geometric frames, or layered planes to divide the composition into distinct visual domains.

A master of capturing ephemeral light, Johnson endows his canvas with tranquil, warm, and poetic tonal qualities. In his compositions, human presence is rarely depicted as bustling crowds; instead, settlements are abstracted into clean structures and minimal lines—floating or sheltered between the vast expanse of sky and earth. They stand as quiet symbols of human trace in dialogue with nature.

The Sky Village echoes Johnson’s enduring observations and spiritual affinity for high-altitude settlements, offering a transcendent reflection on place, space, and memory.

Lawrence Daws stands as one of the most significant Australian artists of the twentieth century. Spanning more than seven decades, his career is celebrated for a unique style that seamlessly fuses psychological symbolism with the dramatic topologies of the Australian landscape.

Born in Adelaide, Daws was encouraged in his youth by the renowned landscape painter Hans Heysen. He originally trained in engineering and worked as a surveyor in Papua New Guinea—an experience that cultivated his acute eye for geological formations and ultimately spurred his decision to pursue art. In 1950, he enrolled at the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne. A travelling scholarship took him to Italy, followed by extensive journeys across Europe, India, Mexico, and the United States. During the 1960s, Daws was based in London, exhibiting widely; in 1961, his work was included in major survey exhibitions of Australian art at the Whitechapel and Tate Galleries, and in 1962, he represented Australia alongside Charles Blackman and Brett Whiteley at the 2nd Paris Biennale for Young Artists. Upon returning to Australia in 1970, he briefly lived on Bribie Island, forming a close friendship with painter Ian Fairweather. In 1974, Daws settled at "Owl Creek" near Queensland’s Glass House Mountains, whose majestic and desolate forms became the central wellspring of inspiration for his later work.

Daws’s diverse output encompasses Australian deserts, Queensland rainforests, interiors, nudes, and complex compositions of esoteric and symbolic elements. His oeuvre unfolds across three distinct dimensions: landscape and psychological topography, subconscious and esoteric symbolism, and pioneering experimentation with media and techniques. His artistic style can be defined as "surreal and psychological symbolism underpinned by precise geometric structure." Reflecting on his practice, Daws noted: "Even if a painting is filled with menace, I try to paint it in a beautiful way so that you are seduced by the quality of the paint, rather than overwhelmed by the terror."

Waterlilies, Study III, an intimate depiction of a solitary waterlily resting upon a tranquil lake, distills many of the qualities for which Daws is celebrated. The blossom serves as a quiet focal point, suspended over a dark, reflective expanse of water. Though modest in scale, the work radiates a quiet, contemplative energy, transforming a simple natural subject into a moment of poetic stillness. It embodies Daws's mastery in translating atmospheric presence into landscape, making Waterlilies, Study III a compelling discovery for connoisseurs of 20th-century Australian art.