He may not be a household name, yet, but Peter Boggs is one of our outstanding painters. His works hang in state, national and in private collections here and abroad. His career has spanned nearly 40 years and 50 solo exhibitions in Australia and his native New Zealand. Despite, or perhaps because of his Anzac origins, he is most engaged in painting the mysteries of Italian Renaissance gardens and spaces in Florence and, his current preoccupation, Rome.

Sasha Grishin of the ANU has described Boggs as ‘one of the finest tonal painters working in Australia today’. Influenced by Morandi and the metaphysical school, his paintings are marked by a general sparseness with a subdued tonal palette. He doesn’t use bright colours or sudden contrasts; as Grishin says, his is ‘the art of suggestion and mood’.   John McDonald described his work as ‘classically beautiful with a strange, uncanny element…’.

His paintings are not populated; these spaces and gardens were clearly the work of talented, gifted creators who we hope will return. Something will happen or is happening outside our current field of vision. Our imagination is stimulated and yes, there’s a sense of sweet, agreeable melancholy. Boggs is not the first distinguished Australian painter to be fascinated by Europe and he may be capturing a Europe that is now changing faster than we would have once expected, hence our melancholy. His paintings are beautiful, mysterious and desirable.