Maki Horanai & Crispin Akerman | Easter Exhibition
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Easter Exhibition at Yallingup Galleries
Maki Horanai & Crispin Akerman
Yallingup Galleries is proud to present an Easter Exhibition featuring Maki Horanai and Crispin Akerman, two highly regarded artists whose practices explore balance, symbolism and quiet contemplation through painting.
Bringing together two distinct yet complementary voices, this exhibition offers a refined dialogue between still life and imagined landscape. Tradition, technique and personal narrative intersect, with both artists sharing a deep commitment to process and a sensitivity to atmosphere. The result is a collection of works that invites reflection and a slower engagement with the visual world.
Crispin Akerman
Born in England in 1960, Crispin Akerman migrated to Western Australia with his family in 1966. After a successful career in the music industry as a member of Eurogliders, he returned to his lifelong interest in painting. He studied at the Julian Ashton Art School in Sydney before completing a Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Canberra School of Art in 1992, and has since exhibited extensively throughout Australia.
Akerman works from life, using a timeless vocabulary of domestic objects such as ceramics, fruit, drapery and enamelware. His still life paintings explore harmony, balance, tension, light and atmosphere through carefully constructed compositions. Each work develops through observation and a series of studies, with seasonal fruits and flowers gathered in the studio and resolved with precision and restraint.
“I am interested in the quiet relationships between objects, how light moves across a surface and how a simple arrangement can hold a sense of stillness and balance.”
Maki Horanai
Maki Horanai was born in Japan and grew up in small seaside villages in Hokkaido, where the ocean, shoreline and surrounding landscape formed her earliest visual language. She began painting in high school and continued through college and graduate school, influenced by Western religious and iconic art. Her work is now held in collections across Australia, Japan, the United States and Europe.
Horanai’s paintings exist in a space that is both real and imagined, combining Eastern and Western sensibilities. Drawing on symbolism and iconography, her works recall the intricate surfaces and quiet luminosity of Renaissance painting. Using acrylic paint manipulated to resemble tempera and gold leaf, she creates layered compositions populated by figures that feel both human and otherworldly within dreamlike landscapes.
Her paintings remain open to interpretation, with meaning often emerging only towards the completion of each work.
“My paintings relate to the time we are living in now, uncertain and interesting. Quiet repetition becomes a form of meditation. Painting in a secure, quiet moment brings a sense of calm.”
A Dialogue in Stillness and Symbolism
Together, the works of Maki Horanai and Crispin Akerman present a contemplative Easter Exhibition that reflects on stillness, symbolism and the enduring power of painting to hold meaning beyond words.
An early catalogue is available upon request.
Exhibition Details
Maki Horanai & Crispin Akerman
1–8 April 2026
Yallingup Galleries, Western Australia
View the exhibition in person at the gallery.
Open daily from 10 AM to 4 PM.
Or view online at www.yallingupgalleries.com.au