a conversation with COLOUR
Actor Tim Draxl, explores his other creative passion, abstract painting, in a new collection called Soliloquy.
Following the sold-out success of In Between; The Act Of Painting and Ten Degrees, Australian actor, Tim Draxl returns to The Blue Mountains of New South Wales for his latest exhibition.
Soliloquy is Tim’s first series of paintings since emerging from the covid lockdowns that were the motivation for the previous two, and it celebrates the renewed sense of joy he has found embracing the world around him. In particular, he’s been inspired by the colours of Morocco.
“There are a lot of reds, burnt ambers and ochres, as well as blues,” he tells DNA. “They’re a direct reference to all those beautiful fabrics and carpets that have faded with time, and the clay colours of the city itself. The walls in Marrakech are a beautiful, dusty pink.”
Tim says he came across the blues further afield, while travelling through Morocco. “When you journey through the desert, all the doors are this beautiful blue, which is used because of the frequent sandstorms. Blue is the most visible colour, so it becomes a beacon of safety, helping you find your way home or to shelter.”
After the disruptions of the pandemic has Tim found his own place of safety?
“When I was able to travel again, I rediscovered the joy of being in a different culture and being able to get away from the place I’d been trapped in. Wherever you may have spent the last three years, having the freedom to move is incredibly liberating. Everything takes on so much more weight and the smallest of pleasures become magnified.
“I definitely get a sense of security being present,” he says. “There’s less looking into the past for comfort. It’s more about looking ahead,” he says.
Tim says he chose Soliloquy as the title of his latest exhibition because when he paints, there’s a dialogue happening in his mind.
“I have a constant conversation with myself about why certain colours are selected,” he says, “but there’s so much more to it. From an actor’s perspective, the interior monologue is something I’m very familiar with, and it’s interesting to see how it’s expressed through my artwork. I feel, working on oneself as a human, it is important to have those conversations… not just with other people, but with yourself.
“The objective for me is to find my own voice as an artist,” says Tim. “It’s very easy to be influenced by other artists at the beginning of one’s career, and it’s a constant quest for me to find my own voice. I’m enjoying the rhythms that I find in my pieces. There’s a process emerging, as well as a visual vocabulary, which transfers from one piece to the next.”
As an actor, Tim is best known for his longrunning role as Dr Henry Fox in A Place To
Call Home. Over summer he appeared in the
ABC series Summer Love in the episode Luke And Olly, in which a gay couple experiment with inviting a third into their summer holiday plans.
Tim next appears on our screens in In Our Blood, a four-part musical drama series inspired by Australia’s radical response to the AIDS crisis, coming to ABCTV and Iview.
MORE:
Soliloquy exhibits at Rex-Livingston Art + Objects from Friday 3 March, and an artist’s viewing with Tim will be held at 2pm on Sunday, 12 March.
Go to: Rex-Livingston Art + Objects, w: rex-livingston.com