run-colour-run
2025 published book
Gig Ryan, a celebrated Australian poet, said:
“Polly Courtin’s paintings and drawings are dappled with movement in thickly mashed brushstrokes or in incised pencil or Conté pastel shadings. Bodies and faces are often positioned blankly staring like carved icons yet they are almost incidentally deciphered within the boisterous juxtapositions of pattern and colour that pay homage to Matisse and Van Gogh, who are among her early influences. Garish comicbook superheroes in exaggerated costume seem to illustrate the constructs of power and gender, and perhaps also intimate the machine-human hybrids we may have already become. In contrast to her rapid Fauvist style are some starkly elegant portraits of animals ruminating majestically against solid-colour velvety backgrounds. Courtin’s celebrations of colour and shape constantly hurtle forwards into their next vibrant manifestation.”