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arts&entertainment

www.affairmagazine.com.au 81

On entering Adam Bogusz’s brick veneer home at The Gap in Brisbane I am warmly welcomed by the artist and his heavily

pregnant wife Sarah. The couple’s two-year- old son John tears down the veranda on his tricycle, screeching to a halt at my feet. It’s a scene of everyday suburban domesticity, but I soon discover the world that Bogusz inhabits

is anything but ordinary.

His paintings are an abstraction of the ‘real world’ in which imaginary cities are fashioned from blocks of colour and the

human form is sometimes surreal, sometimes representational. It’s tricky trying to attach a label to Bogusz’s art, which the self-taught, 36-year-old artist describes as “eclectic” and “autobiographical”.

Born in Melbourne in 1971, Bogusz demonstrated a talent for art from an early age, although he didn’t pick up a paintbrush until he was 28. In less than a decade, Bogusz has established himself as an artist of considerable talent, with paintings exhibited at the Manly Art Gallery and Red Hill Gallery in Brisbane, the Cooper Gallery in Noosa and Moulton Galleries on the Gold Coast.

Bogusz is firmly of the belief that we are all “creatives”, although in his case, genes might have dealt him a favourable hand – his father Richard is an accomplished artist best known for his landscape paintings. While Bogusz counts his father among his early influences, along with Brett Whiteley and Francis Bacon, he rejects the idea that he is a ‘chip off the old block’.

At 15, Bogusz moved with his family to Saunders Beach, north of Townsville. The family home was a stone’s throw from the water and the nearest neighbour a dot on the horizon. Describing himself as a “recluse”, Bogusz says it suited his temperament.

The first flush of romance sparked a lifelong love affair with the city for Brisbane artist Adam Bogusz.

Inner City - Adam Bogusz Coastal Dreaming - Adam Bogusz On The Avenue - Adam Bogusz

WORDS LUCINDA DEAN

arts&entertainment

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He still has a slightly distracted air, relying on his wife to supply dates of major life events, but underneath that quirk of character is a quiet confidence and a strong sense of individuality.

Bogusz says becoming a painter was partly a quest for identity. After abandoning himself to music in his teens and 20s, concepts in Bogusz’s early paintings drew heavily from his favourite musicians – Prince, The Beatles and Jimmy Hendrix – and ways of working that he regarded as unique and unconventional. After dabbling in the genre, Bogusz quickly realised it was something he liked doing.

The artist concedes the other impetus to becoming a painter was financial. He wasn’t making a living from music and was still living at home. However, Bogusz says it is hard to be true to the creative impulse when commercial considerations come into play. “It’s like this monkey over your head all the time,” he says. “When a gallery phones and says, ‘We could have sold that painting 20 times over’, a part of me wants to rush off to the studio and reproduce the work – almost like rubber stamping. I’ve done that in the past, but as soon as you do… something dies. You don’t know it is happening, but it’s no longer fresh.”

Bogusz feels the best work results from spontaneous moments. “The best way I can describe it is when a piano player is able to stop looking at the keys and just play the music,” he explains. “It’s the same with painting. When you’re not thinking about it and it just happens. There’s such a sense of magic and you have no control over it.”

Bogusz shows me a painting of a figure in shadow dwarfed by a dark and brooding landscape. He says it captures the feeling of being trapped at Saunders Beach, despite its natural beauty. In 2000, Bogusz moved to Brisbane and life changed. The city and its mutable moods became his muse. “I went from literally throwing a stone at the water from my bedroom, to Fortitude Valley and its bright lights,” he recalls. “That was a really exciting time. I felt alive again.”

“I’ll use references of Brisbane, but really it is an imaginary city.”

Touring the studio, Bogusz points to a painting titled City Crush. Tall buildings tower over a solitary figure in the foreground facing a stop sign on the road. The soft pastels of yellows, pinks and blues are welcoming – even though there is a sense of the city bearing down on the individual. It could be any city, but the river and Story Bridge are obvious Brisbane references.

“When I first moved to Brisbane I didn’t know anyone here so I felt pretty daunted by the city and had this feeling of trepidation, of not knowing where to go,” Bogusz explains. A year later he met his wife Sarah and life blossomed. “I moved from [painting] these solitary, downcast figures with the city on top of them, to couples and outdoor city scenes.”

Bogusz says he uses maps of Brisbane from Google Earth to get an outline of the city. “I’m not really interested in recreating reality,” he says. “I will use references of Brisbane,

but really it is an imaginary city. I’m trying to do something that’s unique to me. I’m desperately trying to do something that’s different, that stands out.”

While the artist puts himself (figuratively) into each of his paintings, Bogusz admits he is often not fully aware of its meaning at the time he puts brush to canvas. “Sometimes you’re painting about what’s going on right now. But often you’re painting about things that have happened in the past. It can be a bit like osmosis, life does slowly seep through.”

Returning to the City Crush painting, Bogusz comments that looking at it is like looking back on how he first felt when he arrived in Brisbane, but with the knowledge that it all works out well. Asked what it is about Brisbane that fires his imagination, Bogusz is reflective for a moment. “Life changed for me here. It’s where I met my wife Sarah, where John was born. I’ll never want to leave.”

City Crush - Adam Bogusz