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Noah's art lets innocence shine
The Sydney Morning Herald 28 January 2013
Andrew Taylor
TIM OLSEN will not hang the artworks of any old celebrity in his gallery.
The gallery owner said he turned down showing works by tennis great Martina Navratilova and Sir Paul McCartney.
''I'm too busy to do a pretentious exhibition of someone just because they're famous,'' he said.
But he was drawn to the Australian actor Noah Taylor's artworks ''because he's a f---ing good artist … he's not trying to give a lesson in nude drawing or classical cross-hatching.''
Taylor's New Works exhibition of ink on paper, priced from $800 to $1200, opens at Tim Olsen Gallery in Woollahra on Tuesday.
Olsen was introduced to Taylor by the actress Claudia Karvan and saw his works when he visited his home in Brighton, England. ''His work touches on raw emotions and the fear of losing one's innocence,'' Olsen said.
The 43-year-old actor said he would prefer not to ''over analyse'' his works, which are simple, monochromatic line drawings of people set against sparse backgrounds.
''If I was a psychologist and I was looking at them as someone else's paintings, I would say they are kind of isolated, slightly anxious-looking people,'' he said. ''I guess that could be true of myself but it's also true of everybody as well.''
Taylor said he tended to start with the shape of a face and then the eyes, which dictated the rest of the picture. ''Generally speaking, I try to paint fast and let the picture evolve out of itself.''
Taylor, who appeared in the crime drama Lawless, written by Nick Cave, said he had always painted and drawn but had only felt comfortable exhibiting artworks in recent years. ''Usually they just sort of end up on the floor or rolled up, thrown away,'' he said.
Besides acting and art, Taylor is a talented musician, releasing his first EP, Live Free or Die!!!, with his band Noah Taylor & the Sloppy Boys in 2011.
But he is best known as an actor, gaining international attention playing the pianist David Helfgott as an adolescent in the 1996 film Shine.
Taylor said: ''Acting's always been my job but making things, be it music or paintings, is something I'm passionate about.''
His latest roles include playing Locke in TV series Game of Thrones and a low-budget comedy called Epic, about a washed-up director invited to a fictional former Soviet republic to create a film, that will be made in the former Soviet republic of Georgia.
He plays ''an obnoxious Australian actor … so a bit of a stretch based on … well, I wouldn't want to say based on myself, but based on a few famous Australian actors out there spanning different generations.''
Noah Taylor: New Works opens at Tim Olsen Gallery in Woollahra on January 29.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/noahs-art-lets-innocence-shine-20130127-2dez4.html#ixzz2MFdpTowF