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Robert Brownhall is one of Australia's most renowned realist painters, whose latest exhibition captures Brisbane's iconic urban landscapes — ones he says we take for granted.
Brownhall is the chronicler of Brisbane, immortalising the Ekka's sideshow alley and dingy Fortitude Valley scenes.
He calls his work imaginative realism.
It twists the capital's everyday scenes, from the airport to the brewery, just enough to make us reminisce or skew our perception.
Brownhall said his art was about the way people lived, the personality of the architecture — his original passion — and the effects of light and weather.
"It is a great city to paint," he told ABC Radio Brisbane.
"It's a great example of a modern Western city.
"It's full of great stories.
"People take our modern world and our urban landscape for granted.
"We all drive around and assume it's all there.
"If you imagine 1,000 years ago, you could have never imagined the world we live in.
"I want to make paintings that say something about this age, the look of the city and the way the people live."
Brownhall's work has sold to governments, galleries and celebrities.
He cites Edward Hopper and Pieter Bruegel as influences, but equally important to him is process.
Often from his car or high-rise buildings, beaches and parks, he draws the scenes he observes.
It creates what he calls a visual diary, painting his personal memory of a scene.
By day he lops trees but spends every spare minute with a paintbrush in his hand, finishing the pieces at his Upper Brookfield studio on Brisbane's western outskirts.
Over the past decade he has produced more than 100 paintings, many taking the bird's-eye view he is accustomed to as an arborist.
In the past two years he has created 28 paintings and sketches which officially go on show at the Philip Bacon Galleries in Fortitude Valley today.
One of the paintings includes a night view of South Bank from the CBD.
"It is a bit of a new idea to paint cities by night," he said.
"I'm a bit of an adventurer, so I like painting new places, breaking new ground."
Topics: arts-and-entertainment, contemporary-art, visual-art, popular-culture, community-and-society, human-interest, brisbane-4000, qld