Ken Done: Paintings you probably haven't seen

A brilliant and surprising new touring exhibition from one of Australia’s best-known artists

‘These paintings were all done since the year 2000. They are sometimes works done on location or sometimes in the studio. And some are just what was in my imagination.’ - Ken Done

A vibrant and playful exhibition bringing together a vivid collection of mostly unseen works by one of Australia’s most iconic artists.
All of the paintings celebrate Done's love of colour and of life. The exhibition represents many of the artist’s favourite and best-loved subjects; the beach, the reef, and portraiture as well as his own personal environment – his garden and Cabin studio in Sydney.

‘Ken Done and his muse and mate, Judy, have been married for more than fifty years and have worked together for much of that time… Done paints what he likes. If he feels like it, he might paint a quartet of portraits of his all-time favourite dogs. In fact, he’s done just that, with a typical mixture of sensitivity and panache...Judy’s the gardener of the pair. Almost always, when Done paints Judy, she appears with flowers. In Judy, 2014, her husband inscribed her face on a crowded bed of flowers in violet, yellow, pink and orange. He set her alongside a landscape with floral arrangement in the iconoclastic Madonna and dog, 2000.’ - Dr Sarah Engledow, Curator, National Portrait Gallery Canberra.