At the recent annual exhibition of the Australian Watercolour Institute at the Royal Botanical Gardens Gallery, a gutsy smallish gouache by Paul Connor instantly caught my attention and held it - Building With Eyes, Place des Vosges.

A respected architect for many years, son of the late much-loved painter Kevin Connor, Paul, a graduate of COFA (now UNSW School of Art and Design), is also a painter. As initiator of the Parliamentary Plein-air Art Prize, his interest in painting is well known but perhaps not his paintings and drawings. That will doubtless change now that he has left his successful architectural practice to devote himself wholly and uncompromisingly to painting.

There is a power to Building With Eyes that may recall his father’s work but for an undercurrent of structural know-how and independence of colour and tone. It is constructed or built, as might be expected from someone with art and architecture in his blood.

Paris has long been a magnet for artists as well as tourists. The Place des Vosges, where Victor Hugo once lived, is a particular attraction. Paul Connor’s response is fresh and personal. Freely looping blue lozenge-like forms of trees, offset by smaller darker window forms (eyes), create a seductive rhythm of movement across the composition, as a musical score might be written in some haste. It is brilliantly, expressively conceived and executed, and a foretaste of what is to come.

Hendrik Kolenberg September 2025