CWK salutes a grand old master from a generation of painters who taught us how to read the country.
"There's truth in that: where you begin – those first impressions – do remain with you. I didn't have that sort of correspondence to the interior" John Olsen, OBE: Painter, Poet and Cook
"People say to me "are you still painting?' And I say "is the Pope a Catholic?' I mean, for goodness sake what do they think I'm going to do?" He might be about to turn 80 but John Olsen – among the last of that generation of great Australian painters that included Nolan and Boyd – is as prolific as ever, full of plans for the future and inspired by the world around him.
His November exhibition at his son Tim's gallery in Sydney was as full of the Olsen joie de vivre as anything he has painted, and three-quarters sold before the opening. One, Summer at Campy, went to an American collector sight unseen for $650,000. The most popular, Blue Bottles Arrive, was snapped up for $550,000. Olsen reckons it will be worth $2 million in a decade.
All the paintings were done this year and the theme, A Salute to Sydney, took Olsen on a journey back to the Camp Cove and Bondi Beach of his youth. After two decades of painting Australia's interior, he loved reconnecting to the city he calls "that blue bitch goddess".
"When I got the OBE (in 1977), Barry Humphries said "I know what OBE stands for: Old Bondi Expatriate'. There's truth in that: where you begin – those first impressions – do remain with you. I just felt that I didn't have that sort of close and intimate correspondence to the interior."
He plans more paintings from the Sydney series but, right now, there's the commission for an anonymous Melbourne collector. The painting (pictured here in the making in the studio of his NSW Southern Highlands property) is over five panels, about six metres long, and is laid out flat on trestles. Based on a Valencia paella – he used to live in Spain and loves cooking – Olsen uses brushes attached to crude sticks and New Holland oil paints, at $100 a tube, in those signature deep yellows, reds and blues that mark his style.
And the celebrations on January 21? "There'll be a lunch – champagne and chardonnay," he says. "But I'm not very enthusiastic about birthdays. They just bring you closer to the departure lounge."
