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Ernie left his homeland of
Hungary at the age of 18 as a refugee and spent two years in Austria with his
family before migrating to Sydney Australia. As a child, growing up in a
landlocked country under the oppressive communist regime, he had resigned
himself to the probability that he would never see the sea.
In a wonderful twist of irony,
today he has made his home on Sydney’s northern beaches, regularly travels to
Europe and North America and finds much of his inspiration from the stunning
landscapes he encounters on three different continents.
Ernie Gerzabek’s background as an
architect adds an edge to his paintings, which reflect the love of nature in a
unique way. His use of invigorating colour and patterns reflects his desire to
create works that inspire optimism, reflect the vitality of the wilderness and
provide a meaningful experience for the viewer. “For me, the colours are
stimulating” he explains. “I like bright optimistic colours that can translate
into the thrill of being alive.” Ernie sees colour as both an emotional and
visual tool and he aims to choose those that best express his feelings towards
his subject matter.
Dots and lines form a significant
part of Ernie’s paintings and he maintains they are the basic elements of visual
expression as a whole. “Dots allow different colours to be put side by side and
then those colours blend together in your eye (or more accurately in your mind),
producing a new colour.” When considering which artists
inspire him, Ernie says he most admires Van Gogh’s intensity and use of colour
to stir up emotions, Paul Klee’s sensitive insight into our inner beings,
Kandinsky’s exuberance and sense of composition and Picasso’s brave
inventiveness. |
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As for Australian artists, he
loves John Olsen’s playful and imaginative expression, Sydney Nolan’s “cutting
to the chase”, Fred Williams’ ability to abstract the essential elements of a
landscape, and last but not least, Aboriginal Emily Kngwarreye’s instinctive mastery of colour, structure
and connection to Country.
Ernie loves the purity and
intensity of abstract art. “I look at abstraction as the process of reducing
and distilling the essential elements from a landscape, for example the colours,
rhythm, mood and feel of the place,” he says. Getting rid of unnecessary detail
and extracting the most important features of a scene what really matters,
according to Ernie. “I try to go beyond the hillside, sunshine, vines, grapes
and wine to find the final product, the concentrated spirit, the brandy” he
illustrates.
Ernie believes this ‘filtering’
process is well-suited to the subject matter of the natural world. “Wilderness
by its nature is untamed, overwhelming, and awe-inspiring – unless simplified,
it is beyond our comprehension to take it all in,” he says. According to Ernie,
getting down to the basics is not as easy as it might seem, and not many do it
well. “Good abstraction leapfrogs the trivial and bypasses the intermediary to
convey information directly,” he states. “Bad abstraction is contrived and
forced and can very easily become clichéd.”
While selling paintings naturally
has its benefits, Ernie says the real achievement comes when his viewers not
only find his work attractive, but also find it speaks to them. “My main aim in
being an artist is to produce art that is meaningful to people,” he says. |
