Portrait of Kangaroo No. 53

Drawing of Kangaroo No. 53 from the fourth series on the subject, Portrait of Kangaroo. It captures the individual characteristics of these wonderful animals. In this particular drawing, I have depicted a 5-year-old male red kangaroo on the hop.

My drawing style is simple but expressive. At a distance, my style gives the impression that it’s a highly detailed drawing, yet that is not the case at all. If anything, it’s a fast nervous gesture of energetic lines, washed, patterns, doodles and whatever else happens. Yet, it happens under control.
I like to work on a large scale as this offers the capacity of full-arm movement. I love line in motion. Each line/mark always has a begging point and an endpoint. Some end with a solid hard black aggressive brick wall while others wisp away into infinity like the transient flick of a whisker seen while the animal is eating or curiously sniffing the air. I also love the sterility of large plain white space against the chaos of fast black drawing. I enjoy capturing time in motion.

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I am an Australian of Ukrainian descent born in 1954, my mother Joanna Chorney’s working life was that of a practicing artist and art educator so my exposure to art began virtually at birth. I clearly recall, at the tender age of six, sitting in a life drawing class with my mother, charcoal in hand fiercely concentrating on light falling on a fruit and bowl arrangement while fighting the anxiety of making those first decisive marks on stark white paper. That was the beginning of my love affair with drawing which led to participation in numerous exhibitions throughout my schooling years and a one man show of ‘Adelaide Torrens River’ landscape paintings at the age of 16.

In 1974 I graduated with a Diploma in Fine Art Painting from the South Australian School of Art.

Early working life started with a short stint in painting backdrops in theatre then progressed to scenic artistry in the film industry. Meanwhile I was in private practice working towards a one man show of nude drawing held in 1978, This was followed by another one man show of paintings and nude drawings in 1980.