The Moments in Between

Michael Reid Northern Beaches is delighted to present The Moments In Between – the latest solo exhibition by Avalon-based contemporary painter Ben Waters. A star among our Newport gallery’s stable of represented artists and one of the most distinctive voices in Australian contemporary landscape painting, Waters is a major force within the creative community of our idyllic slice of coastal Sydney. The artist’s celebrated painting practice remains grounded in his enduring connection to the waterways, escarpments and bushland surrounding his lifelong home on the ‘Beaches.

After sketching during long, meandering bushwalks, Waters returns to his Avalon studio to translate his impressions of the landscape through a highly original visual language. Beautifully capturing a tangle of willowy gums as they arch, overlap and sweep down towards glittering expanses of water, Waters brings his paintings to life with a bold graphic charge, emotional heft and an approach to colour that is entirely his own.

“In between a view, a tree, a branch, a moment,” notes the artist in the Moleskine he kept during the making of his new body of work – musings that ultimately inspired the show’s title. “In between an ocean, a bay, the tides, our thoughts. In between the sun, the shade, the wind, our breath. In between what we see, we feel, we remember, we share. In between them all are simply moments.”

The Moments In Between follows the artist’s recent collaboration with leading furniture and lifestyle brand King Living, which saw his works installed within King’s new Balgowlah flagship as a fitting welcome to the ‘Beaches from one of the area’s most acclaimed creative voices. “I know a work is finished when the feeling at the end matches the feeling I had when I first started thinking about the painting,” he tells writer Grace Elliot in a story covering his King collaboration. “I hope people continue that conversation in their own way. When they bring it into their home, it becomes part of their story and hopefully sparks their own memories of being in nature.”

Throughout The Moments In Between, Waters conjures landscapes poised between observation and memory, immediacy and reflection. Vibrant passages of colour and interlacing forms evoke the shifting moods of the bush, the play of light across water and the fleeting sensations that linger long after a walk has ended.

For enquiries, please email sophienolan@michaelreid.com.au