Kevin Connor b. 1932

  • Artist (Painter)
Kevin Connor (b. 1932, Sydney) has lived and worked in Sydney for most his life, apart from periods of painting and study in London, Paris, New York, Spain and Egypt, with extensive travels in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.
Tags: Archibald Prize
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Kevin Connor (b. 1932, Sydney) has lived and worked in Sydney for most his life, apart from periods of painting and study in London, Paris, New York, Spain and Egypt, with extensive travels in Europe, the USA and the Middle East.

Kevin Connor is one of Australia’s finest urban expressionist painters known for his ability to capture the vibrancy and dynamism of unassuming scenes of the inner city and its various inhabitants – café goers, faceless vagabonds and anonymous passers-by. Connor’s figure compositions and city scenes have long been a strong subject matter in his work since the early 1980’s. As a great observer, Connor can often be found sketching from life in his notebook in the streets of Sydney, Paris, New York and London. Representing his own narrative of a place whether in paint, charcoal, ink or gouache, Connor’s view of the city is often a lonely place of flux. Although drawn from life, the paintings are occasionally memory-based or imaginary scenarios of a location’s history where the characters are captured in a moment in time.

Connor’s first solo exhibition was in 1962, and he has since held regular solo exhibitions including Kevin Connor – Harbour Paintings 1964-1967 (1988), Manly Art Gallery and Museum, Sydney; Kevin Connor – Paintings and Drawings 1947-1988 (1990), Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Heide Park and Art Gallery, Melbourne, Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, The Broken Hill City Art Gallery, New South Wales; and Kevin Connor: Painting and Drawings (2009), Liverpool Street Gallery, Sydney.

Connor has exhibited in the Archibald Prize over 25 times, winning the Archibald Prize twice in 1975 and 1977. He has also won the Sulman Prize twice in 1991 and 1997 and is the only artist to have won the Dobell Prize for Drawing twice in 1992 and 2005. Recently, in 2012 and 2010 Connor was a finalist in the Wynne Prize, exhibiting in the Wynne Prize a total of 9 times. He was the Harkness Fellow from 1966-1968 and a respected trustee of the Art Gallery of New South Wales from 1981-1987.

In 1992, Connor spent several weeks in Iraq, drawing and painting the war-damaged areas around Amman and Baghdad after the Gulf War. Some of these works are in the permanent collection of the Australian War Memorial and in Baghdad, Iraq.

In 2006, Connor also held a major drawing, sculpture and painting retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, curated by Hendrik Kolenberg. Publications include: Kolenberg, H, Kevin Connor – The Haymarket Drawings, Centaur Press, Berrima, 1990; Pearce, B, Kevin Connor, Craftsman House, Sydney, 1989; and Kolenberg, H, Sketchbook, drawings by Kevin Connor in Sydney, Paris and London, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 2006.

Connor’s work is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, state, regional and university galleries, as well as public collections including Parliament House, Canberra and in private collections throughout Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. Connor lives and works in Sydney.

Writers:

staffcontributor
liverpoolstreetgallery
Date written:
2011
Last updated:
2013