The paintings in “The Cosmic Cartographies of Shane Drinkwater,” which were at Calvin-Morris Gallery in New York from Sept 14 to Oct. 21, 2023, read like diagrams of planets orbiting in solar systems, or radiating electrical fields. They can give the impression of someone trying to puzzle out the wonders of the universe from scratch, all on their own.
These days based in Queensland in his native Australia, Drinkwater studied at art school in the late 1970s and early ‘80s, and has found his way to a style in which things are rendered in acrylic and collage on paper out of lots and lots of dashes and dots and hatches. Which can bring to mind the patterns and mark-making, the charismatic idiosyncrasy of folk handcraft.
“I work with a visual language of lines, dashes, dots to create works that read as mysterious coded systems,” Drinkwater writes on his website. “Some works read almost as topographical or astronomical maps, while others read as keys of symbols, arranged and categorized.”
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