Geoff McKenzie

Geoff McKenzie is an Australian post-war & contemporary artist born in Benalla, Victoria. Even when quite young his leisure hours were filled with drawing and painting and as a teenager he wandered the bushland.

Working in traditional oils, with an innate sense of colour and a rich pallette, McKenzie perfectly captures the Australian outback (its characters, bush race meetings, horses and wagons). He is renowned for his ability to capture colour, light and movement in his depictions of the Australian bush.

McKenzie’s paintings are lavishly rendered both with confident, brushstrokes and fine subtle lines in an array of colours and generously applied paint. There is a spontaneity, freshness and contemporary air to his artworks that make them instantly recognisable. More recently McKenzie has become well known for his series of paintings of bush race meetings. The Birdsville Races are portrayed as a richly textured world of colour with an intimacy between the characters and the horses, juxtaposed against the awe-inspiring vastness of the landscape.

Today, McKenzie’s rich impressions of the Australian landscape (particularly the bush and its people) have become much sought after by art lovers and investors throughout Australia and hang in private collections around the world including, Amsterdam, New York, Tokyo, Germany and the U.K. He travels every year with his wife, artist Allison Shaw, searching for new subject matter and inspiration in his beloved Australian bush, absorbing the atmosphere and sketching wherever possible.