Frances keevil

Leith O'Malley is represented in Sydney Australia by the Frances Keevil Gallery in Double Bay. The gallery is about to showcase new works on paper. More details soon but there are close ups of some of the images available for sale here.

Original works are available for purchase through the gallery. Details at the bottom of this page.

Please scroll down for photos from the recent opening which featured his large diptych "The Painters" (sold) and "Girt by Sea"..

"Girt by Sea"

Oil & Gold Leaf on Canvas 120×90 cm
Francis Keevil Gallery
Double Bay Sydney
Dec 11 – 25th 2008.

You may have recognized the title.
Taken from the lines of the Australian national anthem “Advance Australia Fair”.
The painting is part of a continuing series “The Red Dust Girl” which amongst other things celebrates isolation, solitude, landscape and the Australian spirit.

“We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil,
Our home is girt by sea”

This was my first real use of gold leaf which you can see here in the coat sleeves, buttons and edging around the coat. Usually I just work in oil and the occassional collaged piece here and there.
I sketched this one out about a year ago whilst thinking about that line “Girt By Sea” which I scratched down in my sketch book. I have had a fascination with Colonial Australia for some time now and even painted a large portrait of Edward John Eyre once. So here I got to finally combine my early explorer imagery with the series I am most keen on continuing.

“When gallant Cook from Albion sail’d,
To trace wide oceans o’er,
True British courage bore him on,
Till he landed on our shore”

Some of you may notice a recurring motif in my work. The “stick man” in the sleeve design makes another appearance. For me it represents the real beginning of drawing or the first marks, certainly for myself. It is never far from my mind “this beginning”.
We have all been there.. way back as small children trying to draw.. pure, innocent line.
It still attracts me. That very same sense of wanting to interpret my surroundings, my environment, my self and my place within it.

It’s still as exciting as those first marks, those first stick man figures.
I try to never forget that.

Oil and oil stick on Canvas (Diptych) 120×180 cm
Francis Keevil Gallery
Double Bay Sydney
Dec 11 – 25th 2008.

“The Painters” are Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso and Frida Kahlo.

It’s a homage of sorts to several artists I have been interested in over the years.

There is a degree of metaphor interwoven throughout this large work which had been hanging on my studio wall for quite some time in various degrees of completion whilst I procrastinated over changes and over painting areas.

Finally out of the studio though and bound for someones home eventually.

Incidently, the “hand” earring that Frida Kahlo is wearing was a gift from Pablo Picasso whom she met while in Paris. The hand makes reference at what is called in Mexico “milagros”. Milagros are pieces made of wax or ivory shaped in the form of the part of the human body that the person wants to be healed, and left on the altar of the Saint they pray to.