Books and learning
Art books on Australian painting worth keeping on the shelf
Survey histories, gallery catalogues and monographs on Australian painting: which books to start with, how to judge a catalogue, and where to find them cheaply.
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Artist notes
Painters
Short, independent notes on painters and a photographer whose work is worth time on the wall: who they are, how the work is made and how to look at it. Facts come from public sources, listed on each page.
The long essay
John Olsen (1928 to 2023): how to look at his landscapes
John Olsen spent seven decades drawing the country from the inside: Hill End, the harbour, Lake Eyre and its frogs. His life, and how to stand before his work.
Notes
- Rhys LeeRhys Lee: eerie figures, fast paint and a colourist's eye
- Guy MaestriGuy Maestri: painting the bush and the people in it
- Tamara DeanTamara Dean: photographs of people who belong to nature
- Jo BertiniJo Bertini: an expedition artist's deserts in oil
- Philip HunterPhilip Hunter: a painter who walked the flat country
- Vera MöllerVera Möller and the species nobody has discovered yet
- Anthony ListerAnthony Lister's The Beautiful Misery, Sydney, 2013
Seeing work in person
Visiting commercial gallery exhibitions in Sydney: How Sydney's commercial gallery calendar works, how to find out what is on, where the gallery streets are, and how to plan an easy afternoon of looking.
More on Australian painting
Gallery-going
Visiting the Archibald Prize and its room full of faces
Where the Archibald came from, what its rules ask of a portrait, how the Wynne, Sulman, Packing Room and People's Choice fit in, and how to look at the walls.
Australian painting
Reading an Australian landscape painting
How Australian painters have handled light, distance and the horizon, from Heidelberg plein air to the aerial view, and how to read the marks on a canvas.