Ian Greig: Within the Light of Things

Having recently moved from the inner west suburbia of Sydney to the lush and expansive Byron hinterland, Ian Greig brings his new exhibition 'Within the Light of Things' to Arthouse Gallery in May.

Responding to the beauty, drama and sublimity of the landscape, Greig captures the palpable spiritual energy imbued in the environment that permeates the caldera, coastline, hinterland and mountains of the area. Studying the light and how it illuminates the mysteries of the physical world it animates, Greig approaches painting as a poetic gesture; a means of siphoning the aesthetic and philosophical currency of the world around us. Relying on intuitive gestures, Greig enters into a state of meditative and phenomenological flow where energy and chance work together to find aesthetic meanings in abstract forms of landscape.

My response to this energy is not to depict this landscape in any conventional realistic manner, but to apply the visual language of abstraction (developed in my previous work) to gaze inwards to a world beyond appearances – where the physical meets the metaphysical – hopefully prompting a meditation on the interconnectedness of everything, in both an aesthetic and cosmological sense. – Ian Greig 2025

Working in a newly renovated barn on his property, the bush outlook and exotic surrounds are a constant source of inspiration. His studio and home are also surrounded by wildlife, with birdsong and the hum of insects creating a symphony backdrop to his art practice. Music is a major inspiration to his work and is a constant accompaniment in his studio, with Greig noting at times the 'abstract plays of colour and form on the canvas might suggest syneasthesic gestures of visual rhythms, timbres and tonalities that resemble musical reverberations.'

My creative activity begins with picking up a brush and making the first mark. As such, these paintings are a product of process rather than planning. Relying on intuitive gestures and accidental painterly effects, my goal is to enter that state of phenomenological flow in dialogue with the work where chance and randomness contribute to finding aesthetic meanings in abstract variations of form, rhythm and colour. – Ian Greig 2025

'Within the Light of Things' marks a new direction for Greig, incorporating into the abstract image a more literal reference to the landscape itself, stating that 'by combining the painterly effects of abstraction with the literal space of landscape enables me to respond more authentically to the emotional and evocative atmospheres that the ever-changing moods of this environment inspires.'