Shepparton Art Museum. 14th September – 24 November 2019.
Published in ‘TroubleMag’ and ‘Jackdaw’
Have you had any lessons? The enquiry came from a woman and her friend who had been loitering behind me as I painted en plein air in a local park. It seemed a particularly stupid question, especially considering the genius that was unfolding on the canvas. But even artists have never quite settled this amongst themselves. Is intellect or imagination more important?
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Reflected Kangaroo 1976
Arthur Boyd and his circle chose imagination. Formal study, they held, sapped vitality. This was the view of the Angry Penguins, a group of Melbourne’s mid-twentieth century figurative artists which included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker and Boyd himself. Primitivism, surrealism and expressionism nourished their artistic vision. A position more remote from today’s conceptual gridlock can hardly be conceived.