Even when deliberately sought out, viewing Michael Peck’s work can still feel like a clandestine discovery. Startlingly intimate, his portraits, still lifes and landscapes are set at the fringes of connection – dusk, winter and the forest. He is among the most collectable contemporary artists in Australia, a poet of the complex feelings at the postmodern frontier.
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In this collection of original watercolours, Peck presents ambiguous figures, frosted mountains and velveteen still lifes. In ‘INK DRAWING #23’ – a masterful ink on paper – silhouettes of unknown men gather while in ‘Hunting’, a child pauses with a rifle. Peck is interested in the youthful fixation with war, survivalist tendencies and the effects of mass media, producing mise en scenes that are difficult to categorise. Some works are tranquil, retreats for the eye, while others chill. Like a hunter approaching a deer, Peck compels us to go slow.
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Among Australia’s preeminent contemporary artists, Peck is represented at National Portrait Gallery and at Monash University. He won the National Gallery of Victoria’s Trustees Award in 1998 and has been a finalist in the Dobell Drawing Prize, Metro Art Award and the Sulman Prize, twice. For collectors of the contemporary, enigmatic and poetic, Peck’s works represent a world of uncharted possibility.
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