Every time Bernard Ollis exhibits in Brisbane I go to Paris. Which sounds boastful but I am speaking figuratively. What I really mean is that he takes me to Paris – along with everyone else who comes to his exhibitions.

British-born Ollis, a former director of the National Art School in Sydney and recipient of a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) this year for his service to the visual arts and education, happens to love Paris. Better still he has a little apartment at Montmartre in the French capital which he shares with his partner, the acclaimed artist Wendy Sharpe.

Sharpe, whose work is equally colorful, exhibits at Philip Bacon Galleries while Ollis shows just down the road at Mitchell Fine Art. He’s been exhibiting there for a while and I have seen several of his shows and always felt a bit jealous of the fact that he lives, for a few months each year at least, in the City of Light.

His lively paintings capture that city in a rather unique and instantly recognizable fashion.

But this time around, in his exhibition Different Worlds, he has expanded his repertoire. Yes, there are paintings of Paris but also a charming suite of works depicting French villages he has visited in his travels.

And then as a surprise and a breath of fresh air (cool, dank, fresh air) he presents us with the most gorgeous collection of paintings of the Daintree region north of Cairns.

Last year Ollis went there with Wendy Sharpe. She’s a former winner of the Archibald Prize and was there to talk at the opening of the travelling exhibition Archie 100: A Century of the Archibald Prize.

Bernard Ollis took the opportunity for a bit of a stroll – or a few strolls – through the local landscape exploring the Daintree world heritage rainforest.

“It is a place where time stands still,” he says as we stand in front of these verdant works chatting.

“One of the first things I observed was how scale follows no logical order in this rainforest. At points you exist in an internal labyrinth without a top or bottom. In some parts there is not even a sky to orientate you. You feel as if you are levitating through an exotic terrain in a topsy turvy world.”

He has managed to convey these sensations beautifully in works such as Daintree Bridge, Dark Path, Daintree and Forest and Beach, Daintree, which is a wonderful advertisement for that part of the world as well as being a lovely oil pastel painting on paper. But it’s not meant to be a mere postcard.

“My paintings are not picture postcards or the social media equivalent,” he says. “They are personal and original interpretations of special environments.”

He set out each day with oil pastels, gouache, colored and graphite pencils and wandered off into this enchanting environment. He was fascinated by the built pathways he traversed and the way they seemed to “hover above the forest floor” and when he paused, he sketched and photographed the scenery and relived the whole experience back in his Sydney studio as he painted.

Then we come to the other world of the exhibition which is the one many of us know Ollis for, those enchanting visions of Paris and this time around further afield.

“I live part of each year in Paris,” he says. “I also love travelling out into the French countryside, in particular to some of those villages and hamlets off the beaten track, sometimes in remote locations. These places can also have a timeless appearance. You can feel the weight of history in these quiet and contemplative environments.”

Occasionally he poignantly observed that many had vacated their hometowns for the cities.

So, the scenes in some works are pretty uncrowded.

Like his Parisian paintings they depict architecture that seems to have a personality of its own. Jaunty is word you might use to describe this.

Much as he enjoyed his excursions beyond the French capital, he’s not done with Paris yet and in works such as Pigalle, Twilight, Paris, a painting from this year of a view across the rooftops, he shows the city in a way that no-one else quite manages. There’s magic at work here and a charming window into the world of the artist.

Different Worlds / Bernard Ollis, until September 9, Mitchell Fine Art, 86 Arthur Street, Fortitude Valley

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