Masked Masks

In the middle of Saxon Quinn’s Northern Rivers studio, a ceramic bust rises from a plinth made from a book: James Drinkwater’s I Love You More Than Paintings. The sculpture’s head is grey and unfired and yet to don the mask of lustres and day-glo colours that Quinn is known for, though already chiselled into the visage are familiar markings: a pretzel-fat Mercedes sign on the forehead, a star-like asterisk on the cheek and, parked in the centre, a long gauged-out nose.

To cut off one’s nose to spite one’s face is an old adage that goes back to the Middle Ages. But for Quinn it has other associations. Recently, the artist has been reading about why so many noses were destroyed on ancient Egyptian statues. Apparently tomb raiders, believing the statues were possessed by the souls of their owners, struck at the very source of breath to prevent any possible retaliation. The explanation satisfies Quinn, who is something of a tomb raider himself. ‘It reflects one of the major influences on my sculptures and characters,’ he says, ‘when I do the simple botch job of a triangle nose.’

Strewn around the studio are other clues to the artist’s creative practice. Behind the bust lies another upturned book. Discernible along its spine is the name: KAREL APPEL. The Dutch painter and sculptor was one of the founders of the postwar CoBrA movement, a brief time when the weight of American abstract expressionism was countered in Europe by a return to childlike exuberance and colour. Appel was also a true internationalist, travelling to Brazil, Mexico and Yugoslavia, and painting portraits of jazz musicians Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie.

Appel’s spirit infuses Quinn’s studio, and in particular the unstretched canvases that are taped up along the wall. Faces and cartoonish gestures and flourishes of text emerge from the worn and scratched layers of graphite and paint. They call out, seemingly improvised and freely associative: ROCKIN JEWELRY IN THE WAVE POOL; VYVANSE … MIGHT MAKE YOU DANCE; BIRDS OF A FEATHER BURIED TOGETHER. These reflections mix with references gleaned from the artist’s childhood drawing books to form what Quinn calls ‘a messy blueprint’. His description is apt, as these action paintings, robust and rough, also hide a sensitive underbelly.

‘Masked Masks is a metaphor for the way we shield emotion,’ says Quinn. ‘We present ourselves in a rosy light to others on social media, only to then reveal another version of ourselves in person – a version closer to the truth but with a barrier of caution to keep those around us and ourselves safe and secure.’

As a body of work shifting between painting and sculpture, Masked Masks is similarly contrapuntal in nature. The play between mediums and between the singular and the collective is freely performative. Faces without noses don double masks to interact with the world of the living. Revealed is a multilayered portrait of the artist as a man of complex truth.

—Michael Fitzgerald, August 2024