IN mid-March 2020, we reported that founding director of the National Multicultural Festival, Domenic Mico, was using his art to take a leap into space with an exhibition called “The Cosmos”, due to open in the large gallery of M16.

It was his second show, for after retiring from production, he had returned to his early passion for painting which had been kindled when, as a young man, he had trained at the old Canberra School of Art before turning to the performing and community arts in the early 1970s. 

Mico has become a legend in his own lifetime for his transformation of Canberra into a celebratory city.

He’s been honoured for his life in art with an Order of Australia Medal and an Italian knighthood, and was in 2001 named as one of 75 people who had shaped the national capital.

He founded the Canberra Day celebrations, Blue Folk Community Arts Association at Strathnairn, Tuggeranong Arts Centre, TAU Community Theatre, the Backstage Performing Arts Café and the National Multicultural Festival, all the while writing and staging plays, including a pirate play on Lake Burley Griffin.

But in 2020, half an hour after “CityNews” curator and arts writer, Anni Doyle Wawrzy?czak, had put the finishing touches to hanging “The Cosmos” and even as the cork was popping on a bottle of Prosecco, M16 decided to close because of covid.

One member of the Canberra Critics’ Circle scrambled to view the show of cosmic clouds, nebulae and constellations through the windows at M16, but defeated, he eventually gave up and viewed the show online. Others followed suit and against the odds, the exhibition was a sell-out.

Now, with a new suite of 12 oil paintings, Mico is exhibiting a different kind of work under the title “In the Shadow of Light” at Bill Mason’s Kyeema Gallery in Hall.

“It’s almost like ‘The Cosmos’ but more intimate and more colourful. I’ve gone into playing with colour,” Mico tells me as he shows me around his studio in Bruce.

While most of the large paintings appear more joyous than those in “The Cosmos”, there are connections and he quickly points to a work with a vortex in the middle – a clear reference back to his previous series.

“Also, the colours reflect on the solar system”, he explains, indicating one that “might be sunset on Venus”.

His abundant use of colours makes the paintings seem happier, but as an artist, he says, the challenges are just as great and the colours still have to be balanced.

Mico believes this group of paintings will be acceptable to a wide range of people – “I don’t think they’ll put anyone off”, he says enigmatically.

“They’re just colour.”

Admirers of his art have long urged him to forsake his penchant for creating very large paintings (most are at least a metre wide) for something smaller, but as he says of the format, “that’s how my mind goes… and the size of the canvas dictates what the painting is going to be”.

But he’s decided it’s probably the last time he’ll do them so big, with a decision that he’ll return to paintings about half the size.

“The subject matter will flow from that, but I’ve got a feeling I might go back to ‘The Cosmos’ again,” he says.

“Or, I might do something completely different.”

Domenic Mico, “In the Shadow of Light”, Kyeema Gallery at Capital Wines, Hall, May 27-June 28. Opening 5.30-6.30pm, Saturday, May 29, all welcome.