There’s a nice review by John McDonald in the SMH of Murray Bail’s revised biography of Ian Fairweather. McDonald speaks of Fairweather’s bizarre attempt to travel by self-made raft from Darwin to Bali, and how it changed Fairweather:
The raft voyage exorcised Fairweather’s wanderlust. After he made his way back to Australia in 1953, following a forced, unhappy return to England, he settled on Bribie Island and built his first hut. He set to work and produced Monastery in 1961; Monsoon, Shalimar and Epiphany in 1961-62; Turtle and Temple Gong in 1965. These are masterpieces but many people still have affection for the dry, early paintings on Chinese and Balinese themes.
Ah, those early paintings – here’s one I stop by and see from time to time at the AGNSW.
Ian Fairweather
Chinese Mountain, 1933
Oil and gouache on cardboard, 49 x 59 cm
Tagged as:
Art,
Ian Fairweather,
Landscape
Ian Fairweather
Family Group
Oil and gouache on card, circa 1958
52 x 38 cm
One of the bonuses of living in Paddington is chancing upon great art while heading out for a coffee. This Fairweather is currently in the viewing for Sotherby’s Important Australian Art auction, and I encountered it unexpectedly this morning.
There’s something about art that’s chanced upon, seen out of the corner of the eye, that amps up the effect. Where the world suddenly seems bigger – or our consciousness of it anyway.
Added to the aura of his work are the extremes of Fairweather’s life. As the catalogue essay says:
Ian Fairweather’s childhood was one of bleak estrangement and alienation. Left behind in Scotland when his mother and Surgeon-General father returned to India to join his father’s regiment, he spent his early years being cared for by a succession of aunts, and was to recall wistfully in old age: ‘I never met my mother until I was ten years old.’
And see here for a biography of the artist, a wanderer (though he finally settled on Bribie Island), a man single-minded in the pursuit of his artistic goals:
He resented interference with his style of life, which was reclusive, self-disciplined, austere, and determinedly unrestrained by society. His painting, an ‘inner compulsion’, was self-consuming—’It leaves no room for anything else’
Heading then into Eva Breuer gallery, I was moved by this little Nolan, shining on the wall amongst a jumble of other works. “Red Abstract” is one of his early works, inspired evidently by the steel work of the Big Dipper at Melbourne’s Luna Park. Similar effect on me as the Fairweather – disoriented by its certainty and balance.
Sidney Nolan
Untitled (Red Abstract)
Ripolin enamel on board, 1940
37.5 x 50.5 cm
Tagged as:
Art,
Ian Fairweather,
Sidney Nolan
