William (Bill) Salmon was born in Geelong on 9 April 1928, but spent his early years on one of the properties managed by his father, John Walter Salmon. His mother, Clarice Bennett Taylor, encouraged him to think of a career in architecture, but he was not interested. His paternal grandfather had been a doctor in Creswick. Daryl Lindsay, another doctor’s son, was a family friend and encouraged the boy to think of art. As a compromise, after leaving Geelong College, he studied commercial art at Swinburne Technical College and worked for a time as a designer for Prestige Fabrics.
After the War he travelled to London where he continued his studies at the Slade and then the Academia di Belle Arti, in Florence.
In 1953 he and his first wife, Adele Love, returned to Australia where he taught for the South Australian School of Art. In 1958 they moved to Sydney where he taught at East Sydney Technical College while holding frequent exhibitions of his bush landscapes at Macquarie Galleries. Sydney enabled him to renew his friendship with David Strachan, whose father had also been a doctor at Creswick. Along with other similarly inclined artists, including Donald Friend and Russell Drysdale, they enjoyed frequent painting expeditions to the old gold mining town of Hill End.
In 1963 when Jeffrey Smart relocated to Italy, he invited Salmon to take his place on the ABC’s radio program, The Argonauts. Salmon adopted the name Apelles for these broadcasts. He soon made the transition to television, presenting programs on Roundabout and On the Inside.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2019
- Last updated:
- 2019
