“I came to realise that they are about negation—neither this nor that. With nothing fixed, continuously shifting. Everything forming everything else.” Paul Boston, 2023

“Boston’s quiet, thoughtful paintings and drawings investigate space, light and materiality rather than representing figures or objects in the world, and over time his visual language has slowly transitioned from a type of hieroglyphic vocabulary, through a minimal or reductive phase, to the more complex and layered illusionistic forms of recent times. Throughout he has adhered to a sophisticated, subdued palette and a resolution that his images operate beyond logical thought and intended meaning.” Lesley Harding, Director, Heide Museum of Modern Art, 2023

Over a fifty year career Paul Boston has consistently engaged with abstraction as a way of exploring illusion and materiality. The interplay between positive and negative spaces, between foreground, background and the ambiguous geometric shapes that appear in his latest work, alter during viewing, transforming our perception and understanding of space, greatly rewarding the viewer for sustained attention.

Boston explores subtleties of light and touch through a nuanced approach to tone and the inclusion of charcoal in his acrylic on linen paintings. These are contemplative and considered works whose details are ideally experienced in person.

Since first exhibiting in 1972, Paul Boston has regularly held solo exhibitions and been included in numerous group exhibitions in public galleries both within Australia and overseas including the 2023 exhibition Paul Boston: Stone Clouds at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. Born in Melbourne in 1952, Boston studied at Preston Institute of Technology from 1969 to 1972, but his education was also informed by his discussions with John and Sunday Reed at Heide in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where he worked as a gardener. Following his studies, he travelled extensively through Japan and South-East Asia, where he developed an ongoing interest in Zen philosophy, which informs his work. In 1984 his work was included in An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Paul Boston’s work is represented in all major Australian public collections, as well as private collections throughout Australia and overseas.

Paul Boston lives and works in Melbourne.