My Painting and the Impact of a Different Culture on It

Abstract

I am an Australian artist, living and working in France since 1957. My original home was in Perth, on Australia's west coast, about 3000 km from the major east coast cities such as Sydney and Melbourne. I look upon Perth as being in frontier country, isolated not only physically by sea and desert but also culturally. When I lived in Perth, there was no civic orchestra, and the local art museum possessed perhaps 200 paintings, mostly watercolours of landscapes by English painters. Art classes were given at the University of Perth and at a technical school. I attended some of the classes on a part-time basis and did watercolours at weekends while holding a job as a commercial artist preparing illustrations for farmers' catalogues. In the years immediately following World War II many immigrants settled in Perth. Their coming from different countries, I am sure, had a stimulating effect on the cultural life of the city. In my own case it had a profound effect. In particular, I made friends with a Greek family, a relationship that helped enlarge my interest in the arts and create a desire to go to art school in Sydney. But to do the latter I needed first to earn the necessary money. So I went to work as a sheep shearer, a job that involved much travel about remote inland areas. My term of two years as a student at the East Sydney Technical Art School was an exciting cultural experience for me. At that time I even studied opera singing under an Austrian Jewish immigrant. It was he who led me to appreciate the continued practice and learning required to sing well, and I realized that this applied to painting as well. But this happy period came to an end. My funds were exhausted and I returned to commercial art. In this period I began dreaming of making a break, of going to Europe, to cities steeped in centuries of cultural development. At last, at age 26, I arrived in Europe; I moved from Rome to Amsterdam and finally to Paris.