By Derek Schlennstedt
For more than 40 years, Leunig’s cartoons and poetry have struck a chord with Australians.
His humour is dark, his themes are provocative and now his work will be featured at the Healesville Memo in a new light-hearted exhibition called Creatures, Beasts and Kindred Spirits.
The exhibition brings together forty works, both old and new, from the artist’s studio.
Michael Leunig explained to the Mail that painting offered him a respite from the hardened poignant topics that he usually has to draw and that in these paintings, feature funny and mysterious animals, sub-humans, and figments of the creaturely imagination.
“It’s a collection of work that goes way back really.”
“To see what I’ve been doing with my painting work and I think the type of painting I do tend to do is more joyful and primal, hence the idea of creatures.”
Having a weekly space in the The Age for his cartoons, Leunig explained that painting was a great way to escape from the political and deadline landscape.
“Being a cartoonist is pressure, deadline work … you stay in touch with current affairs, all the miseries and injustices, so you’re exposed to that world of disasters and politics and you have to kind of make meaning or humour out of it, whereas painting is a beautiful escape, and its more lyrical and poetic,” he said.
“I enjoy to paint and it’s meant to be enjoyable to look at it, there’s not some heavy message in any of these paintings.”
Michael Leunig will also be present at the opening of the exhibition on Friday 26 April and will be speaking about the artwork in the exhibition and his artistic journey more broadly.
Creatures, Beasts and Kindred Spirits opens at The Memo on Friday 26 April from 6pm onwards and runs till Tuesday 4 June.
