Michael Taylor: Paintings is a wonderful feast of visual intelligence

Michael Taylor is one of Australia's most important major contemporary painters.

Five years younger than John Olsen, he nevertheless belongs to the same generation as Olsen, but as an artist, Taylor has followed a quieter and, one could say, a more consistent trajectory. There are many parallels: both artists committed to oil painting, watercolours and etchings, both explore the abstracted landscape, both possess a gentle sense of humour and both have developed a very personal iconography. Like with an Olsen, you can tell a Michael Taylor at 20 paces.

The Dock, painted by 82-year-old Michael Taylor this year, is a superb and riotous celebration of different forms of aquatic knowledge. It is a canvas completely absorbed with an exploration of colour, especially the delicious blues, and it is realised through frenetic brushwork. Taylor has never retreated from a form of gestural abstraction which he adopted the best part of half a century ago, but which he has constantly revised and adapted to make it exclusively his own pictorial language. Through constant application, his work has become increasingly intuitive, vibrant and gripped with explosive energy. In a word, at its best as in this painting, his work is brilliant.

On the cliff, 2014, at first glance has a simplicity of compositional structure, but there is also a great sophistication in its execution. In places the underpainting, in a glowing pink, shows through, while the surface layers of paint are applied with boldness and complete confidence of touch. It is a beautifully structured painting, striking, memorable and possessing what Andy Warhol termed a huge "wow" factor. Taylor has that rare ability to produce an arresting image with an immediate high visual impact, but one which keeps on giving and growing on the viewer with closer inspection.

Described at times as an artist's artist or as the Canberra region's best-kept art secret, Michael Taylor has a legendary status among his peers, yet has always had a relatively limited appeal on the art market. He has exhibited in Canberra since 1976, with a debut solo exhibition at the Anna Simmons Gallery, then has exhibited regularly at Solander and Chapman galleries. It is wonderful to see this tradition revived at the Nancy Sever Gallery.

Consistency in Taylor's work should not be equated with stagnation or repetition. In some ways there is a diaristic approach in his art, where each work builds on the last. Not all of the pieces at this exhibition are equally successful, but when they do succeed, it is an accomplishment of a very high order. Some of the other outstanding paintings in this exhibition include Glebe Park, Bega, 2013, People in a landscape, 2013, Railway path, 2014, Animal tracks, 2013, Bird's-eye view, 2013, River picture, 2013, Stingray beneath a cliff, 2014, The cove, 2014 and Waterfront sketch, Bermagui, 2013. While the overall mood of this exhibition is celebratory, it is a celebration which is tinged with a resonating note of melancholy.

This exhibition is a wonderful feast of visual intelligence by one of our most significant visual artists.