Playing with Waves, an exhibition of recent paintings by Phil HENSHALL, focuses on the artist’s love of the Australian coastline and his passion for bodysurfing.

The Gippsland-based artist says about his new series of paintings: “I have been a coastal dweller all my life, with ‘weekenders’ at Mt Martha, Merricks Beach, and currently near Kilcunda."

“While I only bodysurf, my children have become ‘wave players’ and water lovers to different degrees."

“In this exhibition, I am expressing the collision between ocean and land and explore waves in a more intense way. Waves and swells become dumpers, left-handers, right-handers, sprays, scary and dangerous, benign and smooth depending on what they come up against—beaches, sandbanks, rocks, and so forth. Playing with Waves captures some of these moments in the lives of waves,” concludes the artist.

Phil Henshall has held numerous solo exhibitions in Drouin, Warragul, Neerim, Tonimbuk, and Melbourne, and his paintings have been included in curated exhibitions at the West Gippsland Arts Centre, Gippsland Art Gallery, and the Federation Square. Henshall was the winner of the 2014 Mt Baw Baw Arts Prize, and a finalist in the John Leslie Art Prize and the Flanagan Art Prize. Henshall’s paintings have been acquired by the Shire of Baw Baw, and by a growing number Australian and Inernational collectors.

Henshall’s paintings are distinguished by the artist’s own distinctive style, Aspectivism, which aims to convey space and movement by depicting objects and subjects from multiple angles and viewpoints.