If asked to describe what Brisbane artist Jun Chen’s latest exhibition was about you might say … flowers.

But that wouldn’t tell the whole story at all. Because his floral paintings are really landscapes. Steeped in the traditions of Chinese art and inspired by the landscape painters of his new home (Fred Williams and John Olsen among others) Jun Chen’s exquisite figurative expressionist works are dazzling and sumptuous.

His latest exhibition is on at Philip Bacon Galleries in Fortitude Valley until August 12 and is expected to sell out, such is the demand for this artist’s work.

Chen, 62, trained in Chinese brush painting at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts and you can see the Chinese influence in his brushwork. He came to Australia following the Tiananmen Square protests and studied first in Melbourne before relocating to Brisbane in 1993. He graduated with a Master of Fine Arts (Visual Arts) from QUT, ran his restaurant and painted when he could.

In the years since he has become a regular on the national scene and he is often a finalist in the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman Prizes and locally in the Brisbane Portrait Prize. His works are in galleries here and overseas.

He was commissioned to paint a portrait of Queensland Ballet’s artistic director Li Cunxin by the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. There are no portraits in his current show unless you count the portraits of the city of Brisbane.

“For my Brisbane exhibitions I like to include some local paintings,” Jun Chen says. “Brisbane is so beautiful. I choose views and things that people know.”

His painting Story Bridge is a good example, a view from afar framed by trees. Old Government House is another and The City from New Farm Park is a lovingly rendered view of the city he now calls home.

Philip Bacon says Jun Chen’s Brisbane paintings are culturally important because they record the Olympic city at a particularly time in its history.

“It still surprises me that so few people paint urban Brisbane now,” Bacon says. “Jun Chen’s view of the city is fresh and vibrant. And his floral paintings are just gorgeous. He is really hitting his straps with his landscapes now.”

Jun Chen joined the Philip Bacon Galleries stable after exhibiting with legendary former Queensland gallerist Ray Hughes in Sydney for many years. Jun Chen’s portrait of Ray Hughes was highly commended in the Archibald Prize in 2017 which means it was virtually the runner up to the winning portrait of artist Agatha Gothe-Snape by Mitch Cairns. Many agreed Jun Chen should have won the prize that year but that’s another story.

Jun Chen has slowly and painstakingly worked his way into the upper echelons of the Australian art world without engaging in the fashion of art or the politics. He just paints.

I have visited him in his Underwood studio a couple of times. It is located in a nondescript light industrial precinct. No inner-city warehouses for him, just a space that might have housed a panel beater’s workshop if he hadn’t claimed it.

The artist arrives at his studio just before 8am each morning and paints through until the late afternoon before heading home to Sunnybank Hills to his wife Grace and children Hunter and Hailey.

He’s a hard-working family man dedicated to his art practice and inspired by the landscape near and far.

“I love travelling in the countryside around Toowoomba,” he says. “That is where some of these paintings come from. But I also see beautiful trees and flowers when I am driving to my studio. I have also travelled in Central Queensland with my artist friend Joe Furlonger.”

Furlonger’s muscular expressionism is akin in some ways to Jun Chen’s impasto oil paintings, textural observations of the landscape with paint often thickly applied with a palette knife.

“I like colour very strong,” he says and it’s the colours in his floral works that take your breath way. They are exquisite and highly sought after by collectors now, proof that beauty is still desirable at a time when the art world has, to a degree, turned its back on such beauty.

There is also some of the romance of traditional Chinese landscape painting evident.

“I’m influenced by the Chinese tradition of painting flowers and mountains,” he says. “I paint a lot of spring flowers and trees.” As well as his Queensland scenery there are also some paintings resulting from a trip to Western Australia last year where the wildflowers and arid landscape inspired him.

After sketching and taking photos in the wild it’s back to his utilitarian studio at Underwood where he creates his magnificent works behind a roller door.

Philip Bacon is bemused by the prosaic location.

“I am always fascinated that such a place can produce such beautiful pictures,” Bacon says. It’s all in a day’s work for Jun Chen.

philipbacongalleries.com.au