Garry Shead is regarded as one of Australia’s finest narrative painters and printmakers. Along with Sidney Nolan and Arthur Boyd, Shead has illuminated the Australian story and its myths to a wide and appreciative audience. His imagery has an ability to transcend the personal and reach into

Fred Williams knows Australia. He is not an artist who would disdain a gum tree. He is not a foreigner seeking to impose a natural paradise on some strange exotic land.

He is, however, a romantic artist and his approach to landscape is narrative. His images may at first seem abstra

Many Australian artists have taken the landscape and stamped it with their own image … Arthur Boyd’s Shoalhaven pictures give us a new depth of understanding of the landscape, a new set of forms and vistas to look upon. Pulpit Rock, the turtle-shaped outcrop of sandstone that looms above the

The long and illustrious career of Lloyd Rees – painter, printmaker and consummate draughtsman – was distinguished by his talent for reinvention. Nowhere is this more evident than during the last two decades of Rees’ life, which saw a profound shift in the style and substance of his art. Ree

After spending five years in London, Fred Williams returned to Australia in December 1956 as a 29-year-old with fresh eyes for his homeland. The Australian landscape struck him as peculiar after so long abroad, and he became determined to capture this peculiarity. To paint the Australian lan

An alternative title for this painting might be Edward Hopper Goes to Bondi Beach. Jeffrey Smart’s admiration for the American artist is well known, and they share many of the same compositional devices. Like Hopper, Smart stuck to his guns as a realist painter in an era in which ab

With exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne, and painting outdoors at Kew, Kosciuszko, and Werribee, the years 1975 and 1976 were busy ones for Fred Williams. It is from the paintings that Williams completed at Kew that Kew Billabong 1976 comes. Williams began the series, over thi

In the early 1970s, John Olsen began travelling to remote locations with friends such as filmmakers, Bob Raymond and Ken Taylor, and naturalist, Vincent Serventy. This provided a relief from the stressful business of finishing his Sydney Opera House mural, Salute to Five Bells, but

The frog is one of John Olsen’s greatest motifs and has become a much loved and admired aspect of his oeuvre. His first interactions with the creature arose while on the set of Wild Australia in 1971 where his eyes were suddenly opened to the diverse nature of Australia’s ecosystems

Besides a brief period at the National Gallery School, Melbourne, Joel Elenberg was a self-taught artist. It was his numerous visits to Italy and to the city of Carrara from 1976 that fortified his skills and stimulated his acclaimed, mature output of work. Known for its quarries of white ma