Jeff Makin

Jeffrey Makin is one of Australia’s most influential artists.  As a painter, printmaker and academic, he has a vision of the landscape that one cannot simply

classify.  His extraordinary understanding of the language and the history of image making, combine in his work to convey a subtleness of light and

structure of the landscape.

Makin is an artist at the height of his skills, who in the same breath successfully delves into the drama of the sublime whilst contemplating a contemporary

pastoral arcadia.   His long time collaborator, John Olsen in the book Australia Felix The Landscape of Jeffrey Makin (published by Macmillan Press)

describes the artist;

“You are rare, very rare the way that you have given yourself to landscape and offhand,

     I know of no other Australian artist that has done so with such singular passion.”

In recent years his work has gone through something of a renaissance, already collected by all the major institutions in Australia his recent activity both

in Australia and overseas has seen an increased demand for this artist, who is a painter at the height of his powers.

This etching is a continuation of the Tasman Series that was a sell out in May 2005 at Barrack Gallery earlier this year.

(See the last issue of the Australian Art Market Report.) As with all great bodies of work the artist expresses different views and subjects in a variety of

ways and media. 

Lake St Clair is in the centre of Tasmania - at one end of the famous overland track- through some of the most rugged country in Australia.

 It is one of the deepest lakes in the southern hemisphere. It is Glacial making the water very dark and inky. It is surrounded by rugged cliffs and mountains

and thick temperate rainforest, and bush. It is a classic Makin Landscape.

Makin is renowned for his use of the ‘sublime’. The sublime is a key theme in landscape painting that dates back to the 1790’s and the European Landscape

tradition-and by extension the Australian landscape tradition. It basically means that the landscape is beautiful yet potentially dangerous and contains

awe- or is awe-inspiring in other words the landscape picture is dramatic.

The edition is exclusive on release to Art Equity and is a very small edition only 30- all up – this helps ultimately makes the edition more collectable.

For an artist that is as collected and revered critically, he is currently undervalued in the market.  The release of Feral Palette a collection of critical

writings in the next few months, and the similarities with the move of Olsen’s in the market is striking