Patrick McCaughey: ‘Brian Kewley…delights in the romantic virtues of spontaneity, immediacy and joyfulness.’

Brian Kewley, an Australian artist, has been painting for more than fifty years. He started painting at eighteen, when he was a first year law student at Melbourne University. From the first time he took a sketchbook and some watercolours to the Dandenong Ranges, there was no doubt in his mind that he would be a painter. Since then, he has painted continuously, combining his life as an artist with a successful legal career.

Brian Kewley paints vigorous oils, gouaches and enamels, and is well known for his colourful panoramic paintings, mainly landscapes and seascapes. He has travelled extensively throughout Australia and overseas, painting and sketching in each place.

He has had 23 solo exhibitions in Australia, mostly in Melbourne, but also in Sydney, Adelaide, Brisbane and Canberra. In December 2006, his paintings of Malta and Gozo were exhibited at the Palazzo Parisio in Valletta.

Together with his wife, Gretchen, Brian Kewley has a small vineyard on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne, where he makes his own wine, and where he has his main studio. Port Phillip Bay, Westernport Bay and Bass Strait have provided a wealth of painting material, and a book entitled Bays and Beaches (Macmillan, 2007) reproduces more than 100 works of the favourite places he has painted there over the years. ‘In all these bays and beaches paintings, I tried to capture the light, the movement and the dazzle.’

Bernard Smith: ‘Kewley is a natural painter. His approach to life is direct, his colour joyous and radiant.’ … ‘Brian Kewley’s painting of Cooktown reveals that he has a capacity for catching the feeling of a place and expressing it with visual clarity and in true painterly terms.’

Ronald Millar: ‘The visual impact is sustained with an immediacy and vigour that comes from a natural painter’s enthusiasm.’