Brian Blanchflower has radically expanded what it means to be an artist in Western Australia. Two works from Blanchflower’s prolific Canopy series are presented here: Canopy #74 (Brighton Blue, 2017) and Canopy #76 (diptych, 2018 –2019). Brighton Blue uses layers of close-toned colour to evoke the spirit of the ocean where he grew up as a child and that of his lifelong friend, artist Bob Brighton.

Created in his forest studio it is also a sumptuous record of the changing light and atmospherics of the passing days, of the ways our connections to people and place accumulate to colour the here and now. Canopy #76 was made as Blanchflower was moving into his 80th year. It has a bold flatness distinct from his more highly-worked surfaces that he uses to create a tremulous optical flip between positive and negative space. This positions us, unnervingly, between life and death, Earth and universes beyond.