Bernie Greaves
Sydney-based Bernard Greaves creates lushly gestural urban scenes that celebrate the beauty of the built environment. Working with a boldly textured impasto technique, Greaves pushes oil paint to its sculptural limits, layering colour and form until his surfaces verge on low relief. His richly expressive compositions alight on the unexpected charm of Sydney’s streetscapes — from the palm-fringed coastline to the tight-knit terrace houses of the inner west.
Greaves’ painterly language is rooted in drawing, a skill honed during his time studying architecture. Throughout his work, certain elements recur: a car, a telegraph pole, a beloved palm tree. These motifs create a visual rhythm that links each painting to the next. Figures are absent, but not missed. Instead, Greaves invites us to pause and consider the spaces we move through daily — not for what they contain, but for how they are built, illuminated, and experienced.
“I deliberately removed figures and wanted to show how the city’s unique urban fabric can make you stop and look,” he explains. “Each painting connects to the next, whether it be a certain tree, a car, or a telegraph pole.”
For Greaves, painting is an iterative, evolving process. “A small mark, a new colour mixture, an accident on the canvas or something experimental has the potential to show something new and exciting,” he says. “I always believe that every painting I have done in some way informs the next.”
