Painter, was born in Launceston but lived and worked in Sydney for most of his life. He took classes at the National Art School (East Sydney Technical College) in 1935 while working as a draftsman in the Lands Title Office. He began exhibiting his paintings with the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Society of Artists in 1937. He was posted to the ACT Public Service in 1940-49 where he did much to revive the Artists’ Society of Canberra. Influenced by Cézanne, his early watercolours and oils recorded sites around Bathurst, Canberra, Richmond and the pastoral outreaches of Sydney. After a study trip to Britain in 1953-54 he moved back to Sydney, where he lived in a sparsely-furnished wooden cottage in Leichhardt, painting domestic backyards and semi-industrial views of the immediate neighbourhood – Annandale, Pyrmont, Forest Lodge, Rozelle and Balmain in the 1950s and ’60s – then more abstract works. He chiefly exhibited with the Painters’ Gallery at Darlinghurst, but he did not have a solo show until 1976 at Macquarie Galleries. In 2000 he had another at Gitte Weise to accompany the launch of Martin-Webber’s monograph. He died in 2002 aged 90.
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- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2012
