Quasar I

The light and openness of the Australian environment had a profound impact on Michael Johnson's practice when he returned from New York in 1975. Johnson's paintings of the early to mid-1980s in particular demonstrated a freer application of oil paint in 'pure colour' and a tempering of the hard-edged forms that had characterised his imagery throughout the 1970s. The visual vitality of Johnson's 'Quasar' 1984 series was due in part to the 'tension' of their painterly fields of colour and the play of suspended horizontal, vertical, and diagonal lines.

Commenting on their origins, Johnson has said that: 'I went into this funny period where I recalled my childhood with Quasars - I don't know what the diagonals are about - but it was a funny period where, without being figurative, I was trying to get a feel of association with experience. Not place' [1]. According to curator Barry Pearce their schismatic compositions were a 'metaphor of earth, sea, sky' which also served as a template for Johnson's pictures thereafter [2].

1. Michael Johnson quoted in Barry Pearce, Michael Johnson, Beagle Press, 2004, p 18
2. Ibid p 100