Des O’Brien is a respected editorial and institutional illustrator, designer, author and painter. However, his personal art, including genre scenes, geometric abstracts, still life, portraits, figure paintings and drawings, has seldom been exhibited and unlike his applied art is unknown to the public. He makes no distinction between his fine and applied art, believing each is more accurately characterised as a continuous development.
O-Brien was born in Sydney and studied at the National Art School, Darlinghurst, and, later, with Godfrey Miller who taught him figure drawing.
Some noted clients of O’Brien’s include John Fairfax, Associated Newspapers, OTC, Australia Post, Australian Wool Bureau, Herald and Weekly Times, Reader’s Digest, Commonwealth Bank, Qantas. He has also created advertising for many corporations.
O’Brien is a recipient of a Bronze Medal from the Arts Festival of the Melbourne 1956 Olympic Games. He is also the author, designer and illustrator of the children’s picture book The Frog and the Pelican, awarded a Bronze Medal from Leipzig in 1983, and the Australian Book Publishers Design Award. He was inducted into the Illustrators Hall of Fame in 1995. Since that time he has worked almost exclusively on his personal art and has produced limited edition artists books of his work.
His work is illustrated in The Arts in Australia Series, _Commercial Art _written by R. Haughton James, Longmans, Green and Co., 1963.
- Writers:
-
- Date written:
- 2014
- Last updated:
- 2014
