SALA Artist - Rob Gray

Artist profile

Rob has been painting, when life has allowed, since 1986. As the partner of an ME/CFS sufferer, he has seen first-hand the way this condition steals the life of its victims, like a penal sentence without an end date. 

Gallery

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Artist Comments

Locked Behind an Open Door, is an attempt to express the frustration of ME/CFS sufferers unable to access a world which is just beyond the window.

Homemaker: A celebration of the status of women in modern Australia, perverting the language of the past. 

A Life Well-Lived: (no comment)

Blitz 1940: The tragedy of war.

Suzanne: A lady of the 1920s.

Description of the artwork

Locked behind an Open Door: A woman in a white dress sits in a completely dark room, facing an open door, through which streams bright light from the bright orange sky, green hills and pink flowers beyond. This is the world of life and sunshine, which she cannot access, even with the door being open. The floor of the dark room is covered in short grass.

Homemaker: A female bricklayer in a greeny-yellow high visibility jacket, wearing safety glasses, blue gloves and a blue construction helmet, is holding a large, yellow, spirit level against a red brick wall, checking it is vertical. Behind her is blurry, dark green foliage.

A Life Well-Lived: A sophisticated, elderly lady, with long, unruly grey hair, looking directly at the viewer with a saucy smile. Her right forearm is raised vertically, and in her hand she is holding a yellow and white flower, with a green stem which she has between her lips. She is wearing a white blouse, open-necked to her cleavage, with the cuffs rolled back. On her right wrist is be-ribboned bracelet, with gold jewellery hanging from it. Around her neck she wears a thin silver chain with single, large pearl in the centre, and another silver chain hanging below it, with a triangular gold-rimmed pendant, with a pinkish-red interior. On her left wristh is a watch with a bronze band. The background is a dusty pink.

Blitz 1940: A nighttime street, viewed from a high angle, with a blazing red, yellow and orange building on the left, and an undamaged four-storied building on the right. The building on the left has a window frame in the bottom corner, showing the interior in flames. The wall above and to the right of the window is exploding outwards in a shower of bricks and burning embers. The upper part of the undamaged building is lit by the flames of the burning building, the lower part and the street below are in a cool green. Windows, footpath and a streetlamp, extinguished, are just visible.

Suzanne: The head and shoulders of a woman wearing a blue cloche hat, with a white button and orange floral spray, and a blue coat with a brown fur collar. Her hat is tilted so that it conceals her left eye, and she has full, red lips. Her skin is pale, and her hair, visible only on her right, is brown. The background is a uniform dark grey. The woman’s image fades out so that only those areas in bright light are visible from the background.

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