Artist Bio
Originally from Perth (Mooro), now based and working out of the inner-northern suburbs
of Melbourne(Naarm). Naxington’s work highlights an area and lifestyle unseen by
most—a style portraying drug, alcohol abuse and mental illness and how these
elements are brushed over and quite often hiding in plain sight. With a personal history
of addiction issues and mental illness, a personal insight and context is applied to each
work. Taking memories and lived experience, Nax combines it with elements of abstract
expressionism and a unique figurative style, along with historical interest, focusing
heavily on religious and symbolic approaches.
Naxington intends to cross-pollinate his own personal life experiences with a hybridised
classical-modernist painterly style to portray contemporary allegorical compositions.
Applying subtle tricks of the eye and hidden stories brushed over by the unknowing,
these paintings might just seem like an abstract figurative load of non-sensical rambling
in the form of paint on canvas—however when glanced upon further they create
complex and relatable narratives for the viewer to take upon one’s own self after
viewing. By taking substantial influence from religious symbolism, and combining it with
a heavy stylistic and abstracted approach—adapted from the classical masters—Nax
invites his viewer to contemplate their own moral judgements and the conditions that
might lead to their arrival within such circumstances.