PRIZED ARTIST FAREWELLED

Vale Geoff Dyer: Tasmania loses its Archibald prize-winning painter

ARTIST Geoff Dyer has been remembered as a larger-thanlife character, who remained fiercely passionate about art until his death.

The acclaimed 73-year-old – regarded as one of Tasmania’s best painters and one of Australia’s most respected landscape artists – died on Wednesday after a long illness.

Dyer worked as an artist for 50 years and painted some of Tasmania’s most notable figures including late Gallipoli veteran Alec Campbell, Mona founder David Walsh and author Richard Flanagan – a painting which won the prestigious Archibald Prize in 2003. Dyer is only the second Tasmanian to win the award inits99-year-history.

Environmental activist and former Greens leader Bob Brown, who Dyer painted for the Archibald in 1993, said Salamanca Place–where Dyer regularly met friends for ac offee or wine – would never be thes ame.

He described Dyer as a “doyen of oil painting and landscape artistry” who possessed “a very intelligent analysis of the planet and the human impact on it” and could capture people and places on canvas in an “extraordinary ’’ way.

Despite his ailing health, Dyer attacked painting with fresh intensity and presented three major exhibitions last year – two in Tasmania and one in Sydney. Long-time friend and Despard Gallery owner Steven Joyce, who has represented Dyer for 20 years, said he was an “inspiring force”.

“We have lost a true character, friend and unique talent,” he said.

“His love of Tasmania, its people and the landscape will continue to resonate through the legacy of what can only be described as a momentous and critical body of work ’’.

Dyer leaves behind his partner Krysia, his daughter Kelly, his brother David and sister Lou.

Arts Minister Elise Archer extended her condolences and acknowledged Dyer’s “enormous contribution to the creative and cultural sector ”.

Dyer’ s work features in numerous important collections and has been hung in the New South Wales Art Gallery more than 20 times.

Mercury columnist Charles Wooley, who Dyer painted in 2017, said Tasmania had lost more than a great artist.

“Even more than the painter we will miss them an ,’’ he said. Dyer grew up in Moon ah. He studied at the Tasmania n School of Art in the late60s and began exhibiting and teaching.

Then he quit teaching to focus on making art.

“By that stage I was about 30, I knew it was now or never,” he once told the Mercury.