Join us for the launch event at ANCA Gallery Wednesday 12 March from 5.30pm
Not quite square by Gayle Stockley
Gayle Stockley, four square grid, 2024, oil &acrylic on cardboard, 60cm
Not Quite Square by Gayle Stockley is an exhibition of non-objective, minimalist, geometric oil paintings and linear sculpture constructed with stretcher framing. It is the culmination of work developed over the last ten years. Gayle’s style evolved following a seven year period making relief sculpture using bushfire-blackened casuarina. The simple, linear, geometric composition of this sculpture then transferred to painting. Using oil paint, palette knife and collaged canvas-on-canvas Gayle often layers colours such as red under green creating a lively ‘almost black’ or applies one colour only in a sketchy manner without under-paint. Paintings are executed in a way where the marks of the maker are clearly visible in pencil grid-lines and imperfections from her manner of working. Gayle’s intention is for the aesthetics of colour, line, form and the play between positive and negative shapes to be the subject of her work. She sees beauty in colours and simple geometric form in nature and has drawn inspiration from Constantin Brancusi’s endless column sculptures, minimalist painters Ellsworth Kelly and Imi Knoebel and geometry in primitive art.
Gayle Stockley, sunset through forest, Wapengo, 2025
The artist in her Wamboin studio, 2023.
“This body of work is about beauty in geometry and simplicity. By using the basic elements of painting—colour, line and form—I endeavour to make an ‘object’ that visually communicates interest simply by the colours chosen, the positive and negative spaces created by the composition, use of collage and the manner in which it is made.”
Gayle Stockley has lived and studied in Perth, Melbourne and Canberra, moving to Wamboin in 1994 where she has a studio. Her minimalist painting style and practice evolved after a seven year period making relief sculpture and since 2015 has focused on simple geometric form, colour, line, grids and canvas collage on canvas.