Philip Hunter

'Hunter's art is not topographical. He is not so much interested in place as in experience of place. That said, the prolonged and repeated visits to particular areas mean the continuing fertility of these places for the artist's imaginative endeavours and a concomitant power of expressive force. Substitutions of place are the outcome of the artist's intellectual and creative processes. For Hunter a move signifies an inner call for new resources from which to extrapolate those elements which feed his expressive needs.'



'Hunter's palette is restricted to earth colours and the ubiquitous white. The drama of expression he achieves wthin this restricton speaks of the strength of his meditations on how to organize the layerings of his experience onto a canvas surface. The finished product is always visually dense and activated. The viewer is an actual witness to the artists processes, to the selection of motives, forms, colours, rhythms, and textures which gives limits to those chaotic forces which have shaped the artist and the natural phenomena which are his source.'



Peter Haynes, extracts from 'Philip Hunter,' Exhibition Catalogue, Nolan Gallery, Canberra August 1998