Alun Leach-Jones was the son of a Welsh school teacher father and a Scottish mother. His parents had met in Liverpool, but shortly after Alun’s birth returned to rural North Wales where he became the local schoolmaster, and his son’s first teacher. Alun did not speak English until he was ten. In 1947 an uncle, who was recovering from the War, showed him how to paint watercolours. When the family returned to Liverpool, Alun joined his uncles’ Post Office club, and was commissioned to paint murals, his first professional experience. From the age of 14 he worked at the Solicitor’s Law Society, making illuminated manuscripts for presentation. A workmate, Ronald McKenzie, introduced him to art, and they travelled to Paris where he saw Gauguin, and to the Prado in Madrid. Art became increasingly important and he enrolled in evening classes at Liverpool College of Art.
In 1959 he travelled to London to see New American Painting at the Tate, which introduced him to Abstract Expressionism, and changed the way he thought about colour and form.
The following year he emigrated to Adelaide, where he worked at various jobs including as a library assistant, then enrolled in night classes at the South Australian School of Art. It was while he was a student that Kym Bonython noticed him, and encouraged him both by giving him a place to live in the gallery in return for assisting with installing exhibitions and caretaking. His interest in books piqued the attention of Max Harris, who commissioned him to illustrate a book, and introduced him to Sidney Nolan which gave him a sense that art could be a career.
The South Australian School of Art also led him to an interest in the possibilities of printmaking, led by Udo Sellbach, Karin Schepers and Geoffrey Brown.
In 1964 Leach-Jones and his wife Nola Jones travelled to England where she studied at the Chelsea School of Art, while he became involved in the Contemporary Art Society. He shared a studio with the English abstract painter Brian Plummer. Consequently he met other artists including Patrick Heron and Norbert Linton. London finessed his screenprinting technique and he started to make images of intricate abstract beauty, with the generic title “Noumenon”, which he described as “the idea of perceiving a purely intellectual entity”.
He continued working in this direction on his return to Australia, this time to Sydney, in 1965. His meditative intricate abstract works led to him exhibiting in The Field in 1968 and being regarded as one of Australia’s leading abstract artists.
In 1980 Alun Leach-Jones had a residency in Berlin, at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanian. His studio was next to the death zone of the Wall, place of concrete, barbed wire and dead animals.From this came a turning point in his art, with the series “The Romance of Death” which was triggered in part by the efforts of those trying to cross the wall. In the 1990s, influenced by what he described as 'Welsh melancholy’ he made a series grouped under the title “The Instruments for a Solitary Navigator”. He later described these as “like a slime trail left by the snail behind him”.
In 1999, influenced by his friends Lenton Parr and Robert Klippel, he began to make sculpture which was the subject of several of exhibitions in commercial galleries.
Towards the end of his life there was a renewed interest in the mid-century Abstract artists and the way the daring young men who painted in precise colours had helped shape modern Australian art. He died knowing that his work was to be honoured in the National Gallery of Victoria’s 2018 commemoration of The Field.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2017
- Last updated:
- 2018
