“James Drinkwater’s paintings are distinctly his own. They are richly patterned like an intriguing carpet – the shapes varied and inventive, the colour subtle with strong contrasts of light and dark and warm sonorous passages. The shapes dance – the movement of the boy dancing or of the sea? There are glimpses of the ocean, the beach, the dark rocks or the shadows in a room. As James says they are about memory and intimacy and one’s eye can wander through the paintings imagining a multiplicity of images in this richly layered world”.
Elisabeth Cummings – artist

James Drinkwater is a Newcastle-based artist whose practice traverses painting, sculpture, assemblage and collage. Drinkwater makes work about place, intimacy and memory, using abstraction, colour and mark making for transmission of these preoccupations.

Drinkwater studied at the National Art School, Sydney, before moving to Melbourne and then Germany. His work is held in major public and private collections both nationally and internationally, including the Macquarie Group Collection, Artbank, Allens law firm, the Newcastle Art Gallery, and private collections in New York, Singapore, Germany and the UK. In 2014 Drinkwater won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Scholarship.

 

James Drinkwater | Looking For Urchins and Louis Ferrari from Nanda\Hobbs on Vimeo.

VIDEO: James Drinkwater painting and discussing his practice ahead of his 2019 exhibition Looking for Urchins and Louis Ferrari

VIEW: Weekend AFR 3 page "special wrap"... “Why artist James Drinkwater has no time for doom and gloom” John McDonald, 21-22 Jan 2017

21 Aug 2017 - Listen to James Drinkwater in conversation with Maria Stoljar on Talking with Painters