Howard Arkley, Sampler: Formal , 1998, synthetic polymer paint on canvas, 150 x 120 cm
“Ordinary houses are full of pattern. You go into a house, there’s no art … but it’s filled with a kind of second degree imagery – the patterning around the fireplace, on the curtains, in the carpet; and the different bricks on the different houses, and the pattern between the gutter, the nature-strip, the footpath, then you have the fence, then you have the lawn, the house, the tiles, then you have the beautiful sky… and I missed the bushes in between…it’s rich.” - Howard Arkley, 1999
Howard Arkley is widely recognised as the foremost painter of Australian suburbia. He rejected the landscape tradition, as the artist John Brack had beforehand, celebrating instead the ubiquity of images embedded in urban and suburban environments with his vibrant airbrushed paintings. His signature houses, domestic interiors and fascination with mass culture struck a powerful chord with contemporary Australians who readily identified with them.