Joe Furlonger
QLD b.1952
The Big Catch 1985
Oil and beeswax on paper
244 x 360.5 cm
BCEC Art Collection
Queensland artist Joe Furlonger came to national prominence in the late 1980s with a series of large-scale figurative paintings inspired by his travels across Australia, and particularly his experiences by the beach and the sea. His highly physical and abstract paintings, in which he applies swathes of colour with vigorous sweeps of the brush, were inspired by European modernist masters Pablo Picasso, Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse and the Australian modernist Ian Fairweather.
In this monumental painting Furlonger captures three fishermen against a typically blue coastal Queensland sky. Here, the central figure holds their prized catch, a large fish.
The Big Catch can be viewed on Foyer Level.