Dick Watkins (b. 1937, Sydney) is largely self-taught, although between 1955-1958 he occasionally attended the Julian Ashton Art School and East Sydney Technical College, Sydney.
As one of Australia’s most renowned abstract painters with a career spanning over fifty years, he is a stylistically eclectic artist making his work difficult to classify in terms of a single genre; abstraction is the only constant. He slips effortlessly between styles, ranging from neo-Pop to hard-edge, to action painting, figuration and to gestural abstraction. He references material such as literature, music and art history. He also cites influences such as cubism, Picasso and the American abstract expressionists, in particular Jackson Pollock. Despite first appearing deceptively simple, Watkins’ enigmatic paintings evolve from carefully choreographed visual and academic compositions. Colour is an essence of his painting, dictating the fluidity of line, form and content. The paintings not only communicate surface physicality in their scale, but also the act of painting, illustrated in the expansive reach of the artist’s eye, arm and body.
Watkins held his first solo exhibition at The Barry Stern Galleries in 1963. He is a pioneer of colour-field painting in Australia and was a key participant in the National Gallery of Victoria’s landmark exhibition, The Field (1968). In the late 1960s Watkins was a driving force amongst the artists of the Central Street Gallery and in 1985 he represented Australia at XVIII Biennial de Sao Paulo in Brazil. In 1993 the National Gallery of Australia mounted the exhibition Dick Watkins in Context, featuring his paintings sourced from the gallery’s collection. In 2009, a selection of Watkins’ significant early paintings was featured in Cubism & Australian Art at Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melbourne. In 2012, he exhibited in Abstract Expressionism at the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, and Luminous World – Contemporary Art from the Wesfarmers Collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth. In 2014, the exhibition will be on view at the National Library of Australia, Canberra; the Samstag Museum of Art, Adelaide; and in 2015 at the Ian Potter Museum of Art, Melbourne.
Watkins has held over 65 solo exhibitions since 1963 including Paintings from Hong Kong (1977), Coventry Gallery, Sydney; Style Master (1984), Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane; Paintings – Drawings 1981-1987 (1987), Galerie Dusseldorf, Perth; New Castle Lights (2002), John Miller Galleries, Newcastle; and ‘The Great Contender’ (2013), Liverpool Street Gallery. He has participated in numerous curated exhibitions across Australia and internationally including Young Commonwealth Artists (1962), RBA Galleries, London; Contemporary Australian Painting and Sculpture (1973), New Zealand; Specters of Our Time (1981), Royal South Australian Society of Arts Gallery, Adelaide; The Loti and Victor Smorgon Gift of Contemporary Australian Art (1995), Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and Time/Date/Year (2013), Geelong Art Gallery, Victoria. He is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Australia, National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of South Australia, Art Gallery of Western Australia, Queensland Art Gallery, and numerous regional and university gallery collections and distinguished corporate collections across Australia. Dick Watkins lives and works in Sydney.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2013
