Wildlife has been an inspiration to Graeme Townsend for two decades, and his paintings reflect his love of the natural world and the visual treasures he finds there.  His recent work continues to explore the issues arising in the meeting of man and nature - man’s impact on the environment and how nature has responded to that impact.  Graeme draws on fantasy and surrealism in his paintings and takes inspiration from the works of Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte, and German romantic and allegorical landscape painter, Caspar David Friedrich.  A multitude of animals inhabit his landscapes of possibilities - each painting part of a bigger story - like illustrations accompanying a rare book of fables. The fine detail is mesmerising; a pigeon’s wing feather, a water droplet on a leaf, a distant cloud.  We are immediately drawn in by the pristine surfaces of the paintings, then compelled to weave the fragments of information into stories for ourselves.

Graeme Townsend was born in Sydney, and studied at both the Julian Ashton School and Alexander Mackie College.  Since 1979, Graeme has undertaken painting and photographic expeditions to Borneo, Africa, Asia,  America  and outback Australia.  In 1991, he was a lecturer in acrylic painting at the Julian Ashton school, and has had many solo exhibitions in  Sydney, Melbourne and  Perth as well as the USA, Japan and Hong Kong.  His work has been hung in the Sulman and Wynne prize exhibitions at the Art Gallery of NSW.