Gallery 9 is delighted to present works by Tim Price in his solo exhibition Leaves Twinkle Twinkle. We welcome you to join us in celebrating the opening reception and meet the artist on Wednesday April 10, from 6—8pm at Gallery 9.

Every painting is an experiment. The world is awash with visuals and stories and I don't understand why some work their way into my heart. These paintings are narratives and they're style. They come from me standing in the studio applying paint and thinking. I think: move that tree here; make that white; next to it put blue, no, light blue; orange then blue; make that paint thicker; now use a bigger paint brush. I'm guided by my inner cauldron of love-imagery. I love 90s computer game graphics. I love Matisse. I love Indian miniatures. I love Mr Men and Little Miss books. The list goes on. As someone who likes blocky colours and playful mark making, I'm illustrating my inner life.

I don't know what's inside me. I bounce off what's outside me, working with what I see in my daily life. I didn't know I was going to paint a half-naked man reclined on a yellow patterned cloth. The imagery and the story unfurls like the half understood moments that make up our days. Painting is order and improvisation. Within the basic structure, I stare at my painting and think 'what does it need there?' I give enough that a story emerges, but for the viewer it must be a choose your own adventure. Narrative writhes beneath their gaze. For the viewer not to know, I can't know either, because painting is the illusion of meaning.

There is a discrepancy between how the real world looks to our eyeballs, how we think and feel about it, and how we recreate it by painting. Paintings are staged, but I want the staging to indulge in real life as much as possible. The act of painting is a stumbling, haphazard and humble reality, cobbled together through trial and error, accident and instinct. What I see, think, and paint are in constant interaction. My body carries imagery between the world and my canvases. The bodily and thoughtful side of painting can be seen in the marks of paint on the surface. The studio is just another room in the world. I grapple with the flat weave of the canvas and try to bring it to life with spatial ambiguity, colour, texture, and pictures of people thinking they're up to something when probably they have no idea what they're up to at all.

—Tim Price, 2024.

Tim Price lives and works in Sydney where he practices as an artist. Tim Price has exhibited frequently in Sydney, Melbourne and Hobart and holds a PHD in painting from Australian National University.

Press release courtesy Gallery 9.