Patrick Hromas, Great Western HWY Etc, 2014. Image courtesy of the artist.
Patrick Hromas
Gallery 3
Opening Thursday 19 March, 2026, 6-8pm
Friday 20 March - Sunday 12 April, 2026
Patrick Hromas’s practice centres on figures and environments drawn from the Blue Mountains, NSW. His oil paintings depict streetscapes and bushland scenes extending from Springwood to the Nepean River, grounding the work within a specific and recognisable geography. These landscapes situate contemporary life within a terrain shaped by memory, history, and cultural inheritance.
The human figures that populate these works are often rendered subconsciously and represent men and women of the Blue Mountains. In parallel, his works on paper explore actors drawn from his Film Still Series. Created from screenshots and edited using Photoshop Express, these surrealist pastel portraits are produced on A3 watercolour paper, both hot and cold pressed. Hromas employs soft pastels, watercolour, and coloured pencils, embracing the physical limitations of scale and surface as active elements within the composition.
The oil paintings are compositionally complex, combining historical figures or secluded swimming spots with eighteenth century Blue Mountains landmarks. Compositions are first developed using a desktop version of Photoshop and then translated into paint through a grisaille technique. A light blue violet monochrome underpainting establishes the tonal structure, followed by layered primary colours that gradually articulate the final image.
Two principal bodies of work define this practice: Mis en Scene and Brasfort. The Brasfort Series traces locations that form a line across the map, roughly circumscribed by the Great Western Highway. This path follows the route taken by Blaxland, Lawson, and Wentworth in 1813 during their crossing of the Blue Mountains, placing contemporary imagery within a layered historical landscape. Across both series, Hromas explores the tension between theatrical construction and lived environment, inviting viewers to consider how place, performance, and memory intersect.
About the Artist
Patrick Hromas has recently exhibited in three group exhibitions in England and participated in Arte Laguna World, Italy. His multidisciplinary practice spans oil painting and works on paper, drawing on theatre, cinema, and the landscapes of the Blue Mountains, NSW as key conceptual foundations.
At the age of sixteen, Hromas performed in an ad hoc production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a park in Turramurra in 1989. This formative experience shaped his enduring engagement with theatricality and performance. In 2003, he produced a drawing of Neil from Dead Poets Society, the first work in what became the Film Still Series.
Influenced by Henri Matisse and Édouard Manet in motif and composition, and by Toulouse Lautrec and Edgar Degas stylistically, Hromas combines historical reference with contemporary imagery. His recurring interest in archetypal characters and his commitment to resolving complex compositions underpin a practice that bridges landscape, history, and staged narrative.