Having selected their subject, plein-air painters often have to make a crucial choice between working on a large canvas with the attendant difficulties of keeping large flat painted areas active and vibrant, opting for a small scale with more pictorial control and the potential for focused l

In 1981 John Firth-Smith travelled to New York to experience the city, to paint there as a local and allow the powerful New York art scene to wash over him. It was a time in the city (that the writer experienced first-hand) when graffiti clogged West Broadway and adorned the walls of the cro

Artist and Muse in the Studio from the ‘Artist and the Muse’ series (1999-2000), pays homage to the Old Masters who have guided and shaped Garry Shead as an artist. Within these paintings, Shead also examines the appearance and role of Erato, the sixth Muse. Shead’s interest in the Tarot may

In Jinker on the Sandbank 1986, Arthur Boyd paints his beloved Shoalhaven river in a moment of intense quiet and spiritual calm in the half-light of approaching sunset, like a moment that T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) described as ‘the still point of the turning world.’¹ The painting is

Profile 1, 1978, is one of Joel Elenberg’s most accomplished and elegant works. Slender, elongated and acquiescent, this work featured prominently in Elenberg’s breakout exhibition held at the prestigious Robin Gibson Gallery, Sydney, in October 1978. It has become part of a select group of

Rover Thomas began painting in his fifties, after a lifetime working in the pastoral industry. He had been a drover, pushing cattle across the vast expanses of the Kimberley and northern Queensland, from Wyndham to Mount Isa and the Channel Country. ‘I been all over, me,’ he would say, when

During a painting career that lasted just eight years, octogenarian Emily Kame Kngwarreye carved an enduring presence in the history of Australian art. By the time she passed away in September 1996, she was an artistic superstar, having created one of the most significant artistic legacies o

Death of a Husband is from Arthur Boyd’s seminal series Love, Marriage and Death of a Half-Caste, commonly known as the Brides. More than 40 paintings form this body of work, which were made over several years from 1958 onwards, and exhibited in both Australia and London. Boyd’s Brides are w

It is worth recalling that, in the popular mind, the media and in the public Press, Pablo Picasso dominated the first half of the twentieth century just as assuredly as Andy Warhol dominated the second.

With this in mind Warhol’s Head After Picasso of 1985 presents a unique opportu

In 1968, the National Gallery of Victoria held its inaugural exhibition at its new location in St. Kilda Road, Southbank. The impressive new gallery, designed by the leading architect Roy Grounds (1905-1981), was opened by Sir Henry Bolte (1908-1990) on the evening of Tuesday 20 August 1968.