Recently announced as the winner of the prestigious Mosman Art Prize, Gallery 9 is pleased to present Craig Waddell’s second solo show with Gallery 9.

Whole tubes of oils seem to have been emptied in one squeeze and hang suspended, glistening, from Craig Waddell's dramatic flower portraits, a subject the artist knows well. Waddell’s winning work “I remember you as you were my beauty” depicts a single protea painted in Waddell’s signature gestural style.

The Mosman Art Prize judges said:

“Waddell is a master painter as demonstrated by the way he has merged form and subject together giving a dynamic emotive presence to the painting. His control of paint to create a single flower is commanding.”

A Wynne, Archibald and Dobell Prize finalist, Waddell’s exhibition at Gallery 9 is heavily influenced by his every day life – painting in his studio in the middle of a rose farm at Glenorie, Sydney and working at the flower markets. His luscious paintings depict the beauty, emotion and organic forms of nature and their seductive titles reflect the erotically charged love poems of Chilean writer Pablo Neruda.