biography

Gerard Mutsaers is one of Australia’s best known and most loved landscape painters. He is internationally recognised for his oils of the Dandenongs and the Yarra Ranges. Gerard has lived and worked in the Dandenongs for much of his adult life and except for his forays to other parts of Victoria, notably the Grampians and Wilsons Promontory, he paints most of his landscapes locally.

Born in Holland in 1947, Gerard migrated to Australia with his parents in 1952. Even at an early age Gerard showed an instinctive desire to draw. He left school at 19 and became a photo-engraver. His early works were exhibited in local and regional art shows, helping to establish his career. Between 1968 and 1974 he was a member of the Yarra Valley Artists Society. His first solo exhibition was held in 1974 at the Ordon Gallery in Ringwood. Since then Gerard has held over 30 exhibitions throughout Melbourne.

Gerard has the capacity to find and portray a sense of mystery in his works. Sometimes this is due to his brilliant use of light and shade giving an added dimension to a well-known track through the forest. At times the mystery is created by the clever placing of a twist in the river or a gully in the hollow of a hill which makes the viewer want to look more deeply into the picture.

His early training in the printing industry and his years of observation of the Australian bush and seashore have had a marked effect on Gerard’s most recent work. His paintings exhibit an astute awareness of the effect of light on colour and he has the rare talent of reproducing the clarity of the Australian light without it looking harsh or overly dramatic.

Gerard’s paintings enhance the majesty of the tall eucalypt forests. They illustrate the softness of a fern gully, the wet slipperiness of the receding tide, the muddy water of a favourite fishing hole but, more than anything, the paintings invite the viewer in, to become, as it were, part of the light and shade of the Australian scene. This rare capacity for drawing the viewer into the work is what has made Gerard famous and explains why his paintings are held internationally and why they have been chosen for presentations in Australia and also to overseas governments and dignitaries, including Prince Charles.