There is a meditative quality to Aaron Kinnane’s landscapes that suggests his inspiration goes beyond simple fascinations with environment and the materiality of paint. From a family of artists, Kinnane spent years observing the land while mustering cattle on horseback in the mid north coast of NSW, and he imports something of the solitude and vastness he experienced during that time into his paintings. Like the Impressionists and Romantics before him, Kinnane’s landscapes capture ephemeral effects of light and atmosphere, but overlaid with a quiet spirituality that evokes the sensation of being in nature rather than replicating its precise features.

His palette knife technique deliberately reduces detail to something between abstraction and naturalism, allowing the viewer to cast their own interpretation on the scene before them, though an underlying sense of Kinnane’s own contemplations and deep connection to the land remains in the layers of handmade oil paint. The tactile quality of Kinnane’s landscapes is further enhanced by regular forays into sculpture. Cast in bronze from timber forms made using a chainsaw and chisel, these large scale figures are clearly akin to his painting practice while adding a more explicitly human and introspective aspect to the work.

Aaron Kinnane is an alum of Newcastle University where he graduated with a Bachelor of
Visual Arts in 1998, and furthered his formal training as assistant to respected Italian artist
Sandro Chia (b. 1946) in his Tuscan studio from 2000-2001. In 2017 Kinnane undertook an
artist residency at the Chateau de Creancey, Burgundy. A finalist in the prestigious Wynne
Prize for Landscape at the Art Gallery of New South Wales (2015), the NSW Parliament
Pleinair Prize, Sydney (2016), and four-time-finalist in the Tattersall’s Landscape Art Prize
(2017, 2016, 2015, 2014), his work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions in
Australia and France and his work is held in private and public collections nationally.

Commissioned for Edwina Corlette Gallery, November 2022