Gordon Hanley is an Australian artist and its first ARC Living Master.
Gordon Hanley specialises in drawings in the medium of gold and silver metal on paper. Becoming a master of the Renaissance art of Silverpoint (drawing with a silver wire on a sheet of specially undercoated paper) he now draws mainly in 24K gold, platinum and pure silver on paper, creating the beautiful and unique images showcased on this website. In 2015 he was awarded the accolade of “Living Master” (ARCLM) by the prestigious Art Renewal Centre based in the USA, and he is also recognised as one of the world’s foremost realist watercolour artists and has been widely published in numerous international art magazines and books.
My Artwork
Drawings in 24 carat gold
This image is not a photograph - it is an original drawing created by a living artist – using the skills and techniques handed down from the Renaissance medium of silverpoint - an art form practised by most of the great artists of that period, most notably by Leonardo da Vinci.
For those looking for something truly unique, this is artwork like no other. Astonishingly, it is not in charcoal, pencil or pastel. It was drawn using a 24-carat gold wedding ring and several other metals on art paper treated with a special abrasive undercoat that fixes the gold, silver and platinum metals permanently to the paper sheet. It cannot be erased and will last unchanged for many centuries. It takes over 220 hours of studio time to draw an image such as this which consists of over 1 million individual marks of both wedding ring and metal stylus to gradually build up the image.
This medium is non-correctible - once a gold line is drawn, it cannot be altered or erased - one mistake and the drawing could be lost. These golden artworks will outlast oil paintings and will remain unchanged for many hundreds, if not thousands of years.
For those curious as to how these drawings are done - see the videos featured on this website.
Opposite: Goldpointe - 50cm x 70cm drawing in 24K gold, pure silver and platinum
Mixed Mediums
These are artworks that combine a number of different media to create the desired image. Since I work in watercolour and metalpoint, most of these originals are a combination of 24 carat gold metal, pure silver, platinum, aluminium, watercolour and gold leaf. It takes well over 200 hours of studio time to create these truly unique images - there is nothing quite like them in world art.
Opposite: Venetian Gold - 72cm x 52cm Artwork in 24K gold, pure silver, platinum, 24K gold leaf and watercolour
Watercolours
Watercolours are the one constant in my output as a professional artist and they still comprise a large part of my artwork. Almost all of the wildlife and nostalgia prints that were released in the 1990’s were watercolours. The watercolours shown in this section are true aquarelles - there is no use of white paint or gouache - the white in these paintings is unpainted paper.
Using as an example painting opposite, the lichens on the tree branch are the white paper. The branch is painted around the lichen, the eye is painted around the bright light spot. In other artworks, the chrome highlights of a radiator grille or a hub cap are unpainted paper. I mention this because there is a great similarity in technique between watercolour and metalpoint, in that the white areas are the unmarked paper. Twenty years of watercolour painting produced the techniques that made the metalpoint drawings possible. Added to this is the fact that both mediums are essentially non-correctable. All of these artworks have been carefully planned out before a single mark of a stylus or a brushstroke has occurred.
IOpposite: Eclectus Parrots - 72cm x 52cm watercolour
New Book Release 2025
Gordon Hanley – The Intriguing Art of Metalpoint covers the period from 2010 to September of 2024 and features 130 drawings in 24K gold, pure silver and platinum metal depicting an array of subject matter comprising still life, wildlife, ballet, portraits, and figure drawings, mainly of women. Since those first forays into metalpoint art, Gordon Hanley has created over 300 published drawings, an astonishing output that very rapidly propelled him into one of the foremost artists of this medium in the world. Included in this volume are several step by step demonstrations as well as links via QR code to videos that give the reader a very good idea of the drawing process. He is recognised by the prestigious Art Renewal Centre (the largest realist art group in the world) as the first and only “Living Master” in the medium. Perhaps more than any other living artist, he has advanced the understanding and techniques of this art form, expanding its possibilities to integrate it with other art forms and media.
