In his paintings of recent years, Jim Thalassoudis has explored skyscrapers, industrial landscapes, and romanticised vistas of clouds - deliberately locating and arranging these elements in windows or ‘views' within the frame. His most recent work, however, sees the paintings entirely freed from their monumental sculptural frames that had either surrounded the painting or was in close association to it as gilded panels. What has stayed, though, is the continuing desire to depict the Australian sky, particularly the momentary beauty of an evening sky, even if nuanced by pollution. These paintings are indicative of an Australian vista, often with the land removed, or, if it exists at all, as a dark abstract shape to contrast and heighten the sky. “My paintings result from the intense observation of the sky and its minute changes. The passing of another day, looking west into the setting sun, the fleeting moment, beguiling us to want it to last longer. That instant is frozen on canvas, the time just prior to or soon after sunset, capturing the subtle colour shifts at the end of the day.”

Jim Thalassoudis was born in Adelaide in 1962. He studied painting at the South Australian School of Art from 1980-1984, followed by a part-time course in printmaking in 1985. Since then, Jim has exhibited extensively in Adelaide, Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne as well as shows in Hong Kong, Singapore and New York. His work is represented in numerous collections including Parliament House (Canberra), Art Gallery of South Australia, Artbank, University of South Australia Art Museum, Gold Coast City Art Gallery.