The artist

Nº031 / 100

John Olsen

Painter, ceramicist and printmaker

“I first saw John’s work in 1965, shortly after my family settled in Australia from the United Kingdom and my parents gave me a book about Australian artists. I was 10 years old and soaked up the powerful images full of vigour and invention. John sat for me for a portrait in 2017 and I thought I had three hours to complete the study for the painting. An hour-and-a-half in, he gleefully declared, ‘Rosé time!’

As a fellow artist, John understands the challenges of portrait painting. Looking me straight in the eye he told me to be brutal, freeing me from the tyranny of vanity that can impose itself on the process. Back in my studio this fed into the portrait [left], which was a finalist in the 2017 Archibald Prize competition and is now in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra. John is 92 and continues to have a vibrant enthusiasm for art, love, landscape, literature, food and sex, all transfigured in the luscious stuff of paint.”