John Kelly burst onto the international art scene in 1999 when his bronze sculpture, Cow Up a Tree 1999 was selected to be displayed on the Champs-Elysées in Paris as part of an international exhibition of fifty sculptures celebrating the end of th
In a working career of just three decades, David Larwill managed to carve out an important place for himself in Australian art. His work was full of energy, enthusiasm, whimsy and imagination with a naïve sense of fun that belied his intense interest and deep knowledge of the art of the past
Charles Blackman (1928-2018) was one of the most significant Australian artists of the twentieth century, rising to prominence in the 1950s for his expressive and lyrical figurative art. During this decade, he became a vital member of the creative community, including as part of the Heide Ci
Margaret Olley is one of Australia’s most well-renowned painters of the still-life subject. Her legacy to Australian art history is significant and her characteristic interior scenes are highly regarded and collected worldwide. Throughout her long and successful career, the still life was th
Michael Johnson is perhaps the most steadfast abstractionist in Australian art, so it is all the more surprising that he started his long and distinguished career as a commercial artist. His father Percy had worked before and during world war two as an illustrator, specialising in black and
Fred Cress was one of Australia’s most respected and successful artists, but in a practical sense he was an international artist who, like a migratory ocean bird, made his home on both sides of the world according to the seasons. Half the year he enjoyed the urban life of summer
Ethel Carrick Fox was an immensely successful artist in the first half of the twentieth century, exhibiting widely in Australia, England and France for almost fifty years. She was an active member of the creative community. For instance, she was made a Sociétaire of the Salon d’Automne in 19
The life and career of Arthur Boyd has been celebrated in countless exhibitions and documented in biographies, catalogues and journal articles going back to the early 1950s. The lives and influence of the wider Boyd family is the stuff of Australian legend and in that story Arthur sits at th
For an entire generation of creatively minded Australians in the early 1960s, London was the place to be. Offering a heady fusion of post-war counterculture and consumerism, the city was yet to cede its position to New York as the global centre of Western art. In the decad