Philip Wolfhagen
Artwork title: Cumulus V
Medium: Oil and beeswax on linen
Size: 96 x 102 cm
About the Artwork
Cumulus V is my most recent treatment of the phenomenon in early summer when there is enough warmth and moisture to cause cumulus clouds to bubble up across the plains beyond my studio window. I find this an uplifting time of year. I often think of music in relation to my paintings; if this painting was a musical piece it would certainly be in a bright major key. I find I have a need to paint in this high-toned palette after painting nocturnes in my more characteristic dusky palette – a shift from minor to major in chromatic terms.
About the Artist
Philip Wolfhagen is recognised as one of Australia’s leading contemporary landscape painters. His paintings are inspired by the atmospheric landscape of northern Tasmania and the emotive qualities of light and weather. Philip Wolfhagen studied at the Tasmanian School of Art, Hobart from 1983 to 1984 and from 1986 to 1987 before moving to Sydney, where he studied at the Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney in 1990. He returned to live and work in Tasmania in 1996. Since then he has held over 43 solo exhibitions in Sydney, Melbourne, Tasmania, Canberra, Brisbane, Perth WA and Washington DC. In 2003 he exhibited archipelago, a large 6 panel work at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery as part of the 10 Days on the Island festival. In 2013 a survey exhibition covering 25 years of Wolfhagen’s work, Illuminations was staged by Newcastle Art Gallery and Tasmanian Museum Art Gallery, which then went on to tour nationally. A major publication accompanied the exhibition with essays by writers Tim Winton, Jane Clark, Craig Judd and William Wright.
In 2013 he was included in the major survey exhibition Australia held at the Royal Academy of Arts in London, the first exhibition of Australian art to be staged at the RA since 1963. Selected group exhibitions include Australian Perspecta, at the S.H. Ervin Gallery, Sydney (1997); Uncommon World: Aspects of Contemporary Australian Art, National Gallery of Australia, (2000); Depth of Field, Monash University Museum of Art, Melbourne (2003); Constable and Australia, National Gallery of Australia (2006); Wonderful World, The Anne & Gordon Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide (2007); Time and Place, TarraWarra Museum of Art Victoria (2008); Curious Colony, Newcastle Art Gallery (2010); New Romantics, Gippsland Art Gallery (2011) and The Skullbone Experiment, QVMAG and COFA Galleries (2014). He was awarded the winner of the Wynne Prize, Art Gallery of NSW in 2007. His work is held in several public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of South Australia, Newcastle Art Gallery, New England Regional Art Museum, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, TarraWarra Museum of Art and Artbank.
Philip Wolfhagen is represented by Bett Gallery Hobart, Dominik Mersch Gallery Sydney and Philip Bacon Galleries Brisbane.