Another stand-out is Orion (2014), where layer upon layer of coloured patches have been added with frantic repetition. Method has given way to mania, and the painting almost pulsates.

If one looks at the works reproduced in Anna Johnson’s 2012 monograph, one can see how Thomson has loosened up over the years. Many of her major pictures of the 1980s and ’90s are painstaking in their level of detail and overworking. The colour in these paintings can get muddy, as Thomson dives back in repeatedly, but there’s a huge investment of time and effort. Maloon seems to be arguing that in recent years this compositional tussle has become second nature, allowing Thomson to paint with more freedom and less anxiety.

It would have been good to have a couple of big paintings from the ’80s and ’90s included in the show to allow us to test this thesis. There is one even earlier picture, Sydney Waterfront II (1980), which features boats on the harbour, but the gap between this work and the most recent paintings is too vast to be bridged. The same might be said about the paintings and Thomson’s assemblage-type sculptures, which feel like the work of two different artists.

What I’m edging towards is the idea that Thomson’s paintings are at their best when the level of control is most intense, as in some of the large works of the ’80s and ’90s; or when she transcends that state of confident improvisation and is obliged to resolve a crisis. More than most artists, Thomson dramatises the problem of “control” that all artists face. Too much control can make for a very staid work of art, too little is just a mess.

In Thomson’s lesser pictures, all the activity happens on the surface; in the best of them one can feel the struggle involved, the tightrope walk that keeps the painter – and the viewer – focused on every flick of the brush. Thomson may have earned the right to feel a bit more relaxed and confident, but she still knows what it’s like to take risks.

All artists should be so lucky as Ian Gentle, to have such a loyal group of friends and admirers, determined to keep your memory alive. It’s been more than 14 years since Gentle died at his home in Nowra, watching the cricket on TV. (For the record, Australia beat Pakistan by 170 runs.)

Born in Melbourne in 1945, Gentle would spend his early 20s working in Mount Isa and the Northern Territory. By the time he enrolled in the National Art School in 1976, he had seen six years of art studies at TAFE and a lot of living. Older than most of his peers, and more extroverted than any of them, Gentle quickly became known as a personality. It was a reputation he would cultivate with his antics but play down when it became a distraction from his artistic achievements.

For another month, Wollongong Art Gallery and the Clifton School of Arts are hosting memorial exhibitions of Gentle’s work. I haven’t been able to see the latter show yet, but I can’t delay writing any longer. The venue in the tiny hamlet of Clifton is the building that served as the artist’s studio from 1986-96. Nowadays, it has been lovingly restored, but it was once a kind of magical ruin – shabby, damp, ramshackle, filled with artworks in various stages of completion.

The entire package, under the label The Gentle Project, has been put together by filmmaker David Roach and a group of willing volunteers, made up of the artist’s friends, peers and students.

WAG’s exhibition is called Horny Sticks and Whispering Lines, in reference to Gentle’s distinctive brand of linear sculpture, made from eucalyptus branches invisibly joined to create semi-abstract evocations of animals, people and the bush. There’s also a satellite show of work by 14 close friends and former students, called A Gentle Response.

One of these friends, Noel Thurgate, recalls Gentle’s credo that “the life of an artist was all or nothing”. In practice, this meant refusing to draw a line between art and life. With his bald head and bushranger beard, his fondness for a beer and a smoke, there was nothing arty or affected about Gentle. The very definition of a rough diamond, he had a surprisingly refined aesthetic sensibility, everywhere apparent in the Wollongong display.

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I remember seeing his work for the first time at the old Macquarie Galleries decades ago, and it looks just as fresh today. Playful and beautifully constructed, Gentle’s sculptures have a graphic quality, suggestive of three-dimensional drawings. This is given added emphasis when pieces are arranged to cast shadows on the gallery walls. Typical works such as Dancing Turtle (1988) or Dagg in Duckboat (1997) are notable for their simplicity, their condensed, ambiguous imagery, and their comical overtones.

The most elaborate work is Low Life (1985), a multi-layered painting that owes a debt to Ian Fairweather, accompanied by a homemade pitchfork. It’s almost as if Gentle is inviting us to take up the fork and scoop out all those tangled lines that snake back and forth across the canvas.

It would take a hard heart not to be touched by this tribute to a unique figure, whose work will endure as long as the bush itself. Today one could make a case for Gentle as an environmental artist, but that seems altogether too respectable for someone so fondly remembered as a larrikin. It would be a great improvement to the quality of today’s issue-based contemporary art if those who profess to love the planet could match Gentle’s love of life.

Ann Thomson is at S.H. Ervin Gallery; Ian Gentle: Horny Sticks and Whispering Lines is at Wollongong Art Gallery; and The Gentle Project is at Clifton School of Arts, all until March 3.

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