Expressionism Jon Molvig

Jon Molvig (27 May 1923 – 15 May 1970) was an Australian expressionist artist, considered a major developer of 20th-century Australian expressionism, even though his career 'only' lasted 20 years. He was born in the Newcastle, New South Wales suburb of Merewether.

Molvig's talent came to the fore in 1958/59 when he painted the 'Centralian' series after travelling through central Australia - incorporating Australian Aboriginal symbolism in his own interpretation of the Australian landscape. Molvig was an emotional and intuitive painter, deeply concerned with humanity and its follies and always invented symbols and a particular 'style' to suit the criteria of the subject he was painting. This is very evident in his 'Eden Industrial' series 1962 - impressive images of Adam and Eve in an industrialised Garden of Eden, with heavily textured surfaces achieved by burning layers of paint with a blowtorch.

Later the 'Pale Nudes' series (1964) once again show the influence Australian Aboriginal art had on him, and this symbolism was further distilled in the 'Tree of Man' series (1968), painted when he was seriously ill and perhaps already had a sense of his own mortality.Molvig was a rare human being - gregarious and straight forward, often too brutally honest for his own good and unable to abide stupidity, but with a gift of true compassion and understanding and gentleness to all living things, including the human race with all its imperfections and this is evident in his work.Wikipedia

Neo expressionism Davida Allen

Davida Allen was born in Charleville, Queensland in 1951 and studied art in Brisbane. Betty and Roy Churcher were influential teachers and encouraged Allen to develop what was to become her distinctive expressionistic style. Allen was inspired by Expressionist painters, such as Emil Nolde, and the Fauves, a group of artists led by Henri Matisse whose works were characterised by brilliant color, expressive brushwork and a kind of primitive wildness. These influences are evident in Allen’s use of dark jagged forms, floating figures, truncated limbs and a paint surface so thick in parts that it is almost sculptural. My father-in-law hosing his celtus trees is a portrait of Ipswich doctor John Shera. It won the prestigious Archibald Prize for portraiture in 1986 but is far removed from formal or traditional portraiture of distinguished figures. In Allen’s portrait, her father-in-law is wearing shorts and is depicted as an old man who appears vulnerable and exposed but glares at the viewer in a confronting manner. Allen describes the process of creating paintings as torturous, as being ‘like giving birth’, and this painting’s surface was actually beaten with branches from John Shera’s garden. Stylistically Allen’s work reflects the painting process and it also reveals the influences of her catholic education and ongoing interest in the grand themes of birth, life and death.(.ipswichartgallery)