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The Art of Dining - John Olsen's Creative Flair with Food
Sydney Morning Herald March 2010
Helen Pitt
En route to the Spanish island of Majorca, artist John Olsen had an epiphany in Barcelona's La Boqueria market. The year was 1957 but, growing up in 1930s Australia, he thought green beans were meant to be khaki-coloured and peas were grey and mushy. Born in Newcastle in 1928, where his father ran a clothing shop in Hunter Street, he says his mother as a cook was typical of her time: everything was over-boiled.
It was that first visit to a market in the Catalan capital, where he discovered the real colours of vegetables and ones he'd never heard of like eggplant, pimientos and green peppers.
"It was a surrealist scene of saffron-coloured chickens and ducks," he says of the Barcelona market. "Black and white studded garlic blood vegetables of lurid green, red, purple peppers, zucchinis, onions and eggplants.
"Gum trees and desert landscapes disappeared. The Road to Damascus, for me, was just off the Ramblas."