Acclaimed Canberra artist Roger Beale’s latest exhibition, The Magic of Light, sees the classically trained painter depict light beautifully falling across flowers, landscapes and people.

Open from this Saturday at Fyshwick’s Humble House Gallery, Beale has painted the 60 artworks in the exhibition since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, choosing to concentrate on light as opposed to shadow.

“You can only really capture light if you have shadow, but it’s a happy shadow,” he said.

“One of the reasons I really wanted to concentrate on light and not shadow is because it had been such a grim time for a lot of people.”

Bursting with energy, Beale painted the works with tremendous care and precision, ensuring light is touching the parts of the scene he intended it to.

The subject matter spans from the hyperlocal to worldly; flowers captured at Floriade and at Beale’s Canberra home hang alongside a suite of landscapes and character studies from sketchbooks and memories of “the places I couldn’t travel to during lockdown”, namely Paris and Italy.

He started work on the exhibition with a series of photographs and drawings done at the last full-scale Floriade in 2019 before lockdown.

After photographing a field of poppies at Floriade for reference, one flower in particular caught Beale’s eye, which inspired twin 2m-high paintings of that singular poppy: one against a black background and one on white.

Landscapes include a whole suite devoted to Paris’ Luxembourg Gardens, Madrid’s El Retiro Park, dramatic Sicilian landscapes, and the vineyards and alps of northern Italy.

Beale said his character studies are best described as “tronies” – a type of work common in Dutch Golden Age painting depicting anonymous sitters – all based on people spotted in Paris.

“The people I drew were mainly in bars or bistros, sometimes in art galleries, and they’re just little character studies in oils,” he said.

The works vary in scale from very small studies through to vast canvases that would look stunning in contemporary or traditional homes. The diversity also makes for an engaging experience walking through the exhibition space.

“It’s a terrific venue with high walls and good lighting, and I’m thrilled with the way the exhibition looks,” Beale said.

Confined to a wheelchair for many years after having contracted polio as a child in the 1940s, he intuitively began painting and drawing throughout his childhood as a way of thinking about life outside.

Deciding to pursue university over art school, which was followed by a distinguished career in the public service, Beale said he never stopped painting.

Having undergone extensive training, including time at the Florence Art Academy, Beale has exhibited professionally since 1984.

Working with very expensive paints, he takes a very carefully considered and technically accurate approach when applying them.

“The techniques I use are the sorts of techniques painters in the Renaissance and Baroque used, and that’s what helps the works glow,” he said.

Roger Beale’s The Magic of Light will be displayed at Humble House Gallery, Fyshwick, 30 April to 29 May; humblehouse.com.au

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