Taking his subjects from often overlooked everyday scenes in his life, his extreme magnification of the image and limited palette presents a form of abstraction. Lovett’s painting of timeless memento mori motifs such as still-life flowers, grass and foliage simultaneously eschew and embrace their allegorical roots. Using tonal washes of an almost monochromatic colour palette, he confuses the distinctions between positive and negative space, luring us into a different world that is at once familiar and foreign.

Artist Biography

Dane Lovett’s paintings are precisely crafted observations of familiar subject matter – from domestic plants and flowers to music and popular culture echoing art historic traditions of still-life painting yet taking on new meaning through the act of repetition. Lovett merges a hazy, photorealistic formal technique with an experimental approach to surface matter, often applying his paint to aluminium or wooden board. A restrictive palette and play with positive and negative space enhance his distinct approach to mark making. The conflation of these processes emphasises a larger enquiry into how design, tension and balance shape our approach to relatively modest subject matter. Elegant vistas of still life, Lovett’s paintings are simultaneously nostalgic and entirely contemporary.

Dane Lovett has undertaken multiple residencies, including the DESA artist in residence, Bali, Indonesia (2023) and Australia Council Tokyo Studio Residency, Tokyo, JP (2011). In 2019, Lovett was awarded the Victoria-Jiangsu Sister Province Arts Exchange, undertaking a residency at Points Centre for Contemporary Art (PCCA) in Jiangsu, China, which was the inspiration for his ongoing series of waterlily paintings. Dane was a finalist in the Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize (2017). Dane Lovett’s work is held in the collections of Artbank Australia and Art Gallery of New South Wales.