Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Australian painter best known for his series on the outlaw Ned Kelly and other Australian historical subjects.
On the island
Eight records
Janani Mava Me Bhaarati Jaya Jani Ma Mahmiye Ba Rati Jaya Janani Ma Mawi
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
The keepsakes
No book or luxury recorded for this episode.
In conversation
Presenter asks
0:52While most young children take a delight in drawing, was there any one who encouraged you to express yourself pictorially, so that drawing meant more to you than other children?
Well, my family have always encouraged me, but I think they would encourage me if I'd taken up weightlifting.
Presenter asks
1:20As a child, what was it your big ambition to be?
I think to be an explorer, mainly because these are kind of things that one was taught a lot about at school there, Australian explorers.
Presenter asks
1:27What was your first job when you left school?
Painting on glass in a in a sign factory. Doing these illuminated signs on glass.
Presenter asks
In your paintings of that period you seem to be trying to express the essence of Australia on canvas, landscapes naturally, and also Australian history, Ned Kelly, the Eureka Stockade and so on. Is that a fair comment of what you were trying to do?
Yes, I think it's true of a number of young painters in a way about that period. They're all bubbling with something to do with Australia.
Presenter asks
6:04Some of the critics became amateur psychologists and tried to surmise what this subject meant to you, that you were looking forward through the subsequent birth of Helen to the tragedy of Troy, and that Troy took on for you the associations of Gallipoli. Was any of that consciously true, do you think?
Well, I think it's it's a literary parallel and it might have its truth, but and it's true in the sense that the leader exhibition came in between uh the Glipley paintings. Uh but essentially I think … as an Australian, the Glipoli campaign, the Anzac Landing, looms very large in the kind of Australian psyche really.
Presenter asks
9:49Is your career working out the way you wanted it to?
Well, yes, I've worked hard at it to the best of my ability. I I suppose one of the the the few things uh I could say that I would like to perhaps paint in a way that wasn't so much of a protest, you know, and has hopes that the world would be a a somewhat different place one day and that uh people, particularly young people, wouldn't uh have to protest so much. But um generally speaking, uh yes.
“Well, my family have always encouraged me, but I think they would encourage me if I'd taken up weightlifting.”
“I think to be an explorer, mainly because these are kind of things that one was taught a lot about at school there, Australian explorers.”
“Well, it was a case, yes, of just jumping off the cliff really and and and painting anyway.”
“Yes, I think it's true of a number of young painters in a way about that period. They're all bubbling with something to do with Australia.”
“Yes, I seem to paint better if I get steamed up about the theme, and while it lasts, uh you know, I'm I'm content to go along with it.”