“For everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven” Ecclesiastes 3.

Every painting in this series tells a story. The central metaphor is the rhyme between nature and life. There is a time to live and a time to die. But there is persistence in the face of trial, and hope of renewal is present in the worst of times.

In the two years since my last show I have seen the love of my life, Venetia, recover from what was thought to be a life to be lived out in a wheelchair to one where she is walking and very fit. It has been extraordinary – her doctors and physiotherapists are stunned.

Reflecting that, these pictures range from the moody, but hopeful, to the outrageously joyous. Roger Beale AO

Roger Beale is one of Canberra’s better known artists with numerous solo and group shows since 1984. He is classically trained (teachers include the late Betty and Roy Churcher, Melville Haysom, John Molvig and the faculty of the Florence School of Art) and paints in a realist style in the European tradition.

Sasha Grishin, Canberra’s foremost art critic and art academic recently reviewed this exhibition, you can read it here.

Also, Roger was interviewed by Barbie Robinson from Living Arts Canberra and the podcast can be heard here.