EDDIE WARHURST

oil

An Aireys Inlet local with a deep and ongoing connection to the Mallee, Eddie Warhurst’s distinctive oil paintings are expressionistic and immediately recognisable.

Born and raised in Mildura, Warhurst is an accomplished Australian painter whose distinctive, expressionistic landscapes have developed through a lifelong engagement with place.  Now a long-term resident of Aireys Inlet, Warhurst maintains a deep connection to the Mallee which continues to underpin his visual language.

Working predominantly in oils, birds and animals recur throughout Warhurst’s practice as vital “witness figures” within the landscape. Their presence animates his compositions and honours their integrated belonging to, and being of, place. 

Warhurst’s paintings emerge through memory, observation and emotional response. 

His major survey exhibition, Sandhills to Seascapes, brought together rarely seen early paintings from the artist’s private collection with a significant new body of work. Spanning three defining phases of his practice, the exhibition revealed an artist continually returning to and refining his response to place.

Transforming the density, heat and tonal character of the inland into layered fields of colour, intersecting lines and shifting planes, his coastal works explore and reflect the expansive light and atmosphere of Aireys Inlet.  Elements of the local environment, such as cliffs, waterways, birdlife and the dense interweaving of coastal bush, are carried within the paintings as presence rather than direct representation. Space is activated through compressed forms, layered geometry and heightened internal rhythm, giving the work its immediate and recognisable energy.

Trained as a secondary art teacher and tertiary lecturer, Warhurst has presented numerous solo exhibitions across regional Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia, including exhibitions in Mildura, Swan Hill, Portland, Aireys Inlet, Euston, Boort and Tanunda. He has received awards at regional art shows in Lorne and Winchelsea, and his commissioned works and paintings have found audiences and collectors throughout Australia.

We are proud to represent Eddie Warhurst in his home community of Aireys Inlet.