Summary
Rick Amor is a Melbourne-based painter and sculptor known primarily for his portraits, landscapes, cityscapes and seascapes. Through his use of strong, dark colours and distinct planes of light and shadow, his paintings frequently invoke a watchful air that signals unknown subtextual depths. There is a particular quality to Amor’s paintings that distinguishes them from those of others; it is partly the Symbolist language that often structures his compositions, partly the unmistakable painterly style and partly a prevailing sombre tone.
Painted in 2007 and entering the collection the following year, Amor’s ‘The Chefs’ is a wonderfully Melbourne-centric work. The artist claims the scene is no precise laneway location but inspired by the inner-city’s signature graffiti-scrawled back lanes. In a town in which cuisine is king, here a coterie of hatted chefs steps out of the heat of the kitchen and into the dim light, the calm and light suggesting the end of service. While on the one hand there is an intimacy to this scene, on the other the chefs appear not to converse with one another but to be alone in their togetherness. They convey a certain sense of isolation that is not uncommon to Amor’s artworks.
Gina Lee Associate Director
