Rick Amor
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Rick Amor (born 1948) is an Australian artist and figurative painter. He was an official war artist.
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[edit] Life and work
Rick Amor was born in Frankston, [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]. He has a Certificate in art from the Caulfield Institute of Technology, and Associate Diploma of Painting from the National Gallery School, Melbourne.
He began exhibiting at the Joseph Brown gallery in 1974. He has entered the Archibald Prize at least 11 times and been hung 9 times.He has been the recipient of several Australia Council studio residencies which have allowed him to work in London, New York and Barcelona. In 1999 he was one of the first Australian artists to be appointed as the Official War Artist to East Timor by the Australian War Memorial, and the first since the end of the Vietnam War.
Rick has held over 40 solo exhibitions of his work since first exhibiting at Joseph Brown Gallery in 1974 and has shown annually at Niagara Galleries for the past 20 years. A major survey exhibition of his paintings was curated by McClelland Gallery in 1990 and toured various regional galleries in Victoria and South Australia throughout 1990 and 1991. In 1993 another exhibition mounted by Bendigo Art Gallery toured Australia. He Lives and works in Melbourne.
There was a biography published about him in 2001 called The Solitary Watcher: Rick Amor and his art, by Gary Catalano.
He was interviewed in the 2005 Peter Berner documentary about the Archibald Prize called Loaded Brush.
[edit] Paintings
There is a certain poetic mystery and menace in the paintings of Rick Amor. His major themes are the solitary watcher, figures at twilight, the vast emptiness of urban spaces and quiet mysterious interiors. His works reasonate with powerful symbolism, and his landscapes in particular are full of disquieting atmosphere, with objects bathed in half light and shadows.
[edit] Collections
Rick Amor is represented in the permanent collections of the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, and numerous State Gallery, Regional Gallery and University collections throughout Australia.
