Biography

Click here to view a short video on Brian Roberts

Brian Roberts studied painting and graphic design at the Melbourne College of Graphic Arts as part of a seven year printing apprenticeship at The Herald and Weekly Times in Melbourne. He then worked in London and the USA in television and film making while continuing to develop his knowledge of painting and of the work of European and American artists. On returning to Australia in the 1970’s he continued for a time as a film producer/director in the advertising industry and opened Impressions Gallery, and later Signed Editions Gallery in Melbourne.

Brian has created a body of work which locates his expressionist and painterly techniques developed over the past thirty years firmly in the contemporary context. His preoccupation with pure colour and luscious paint reflects his emotional reaction to a world in a continuous state of flux. His maritime pictures are metaphors for personal journeys containing maps washed over with ambiguous sweeps of colour and perhaps heavy weather. This has brought him to a fascination with not only the harbour signals which are still in use but also a more historical aspect contained in the journals and letters of Matthew Flinders and other navigators.

Brian’s landscape and seascape paintings are concerned with the atmosphere and movement around Australia’s eastern coastline. The bays and waterways have been an endless source of new experiences and emotions which he expresses with mood and strong pure colour. His aim is to try to flow with nature’s ever changing energies.