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John Olsen: A Wandering Minstrel
Sunday Programme, Channel 9 30 June 2002
Reporter : Max Cullen Producer: Catherine Hunter
Painter John Olsen is unquestionably one of our greatest living artists and not only is he a great artist, but he has a reputation for good living.
As NSW Art Gallery Director Edmund Capon says, "John is the most naturally gregarious spirit that has ever been created. It is his natural way to be an incurable optimist, to embrace everything and I think it was from him that I learnt my regular New Year's resolution which is to give up nothing and take up everything!"
Born in Newcastle in 1928, the Olsen family moved to Sydney when John was seven. Sydney was for many decades a big influence on the artist. He studied there at Julian Ashton's art school under John Passmore, gaining a solid grounding in classical drawing.
Olsen's escape from that rigorous environment, and indeed Australia, came with patronage from a Sydney businessmen who paid for him to go overseas and paint. It was a transforming period for the young artist.
He spent most of his time in Spain, falling in love with the Mediterranean.
"I became involved with this idea the Mediterranean is the bath of our civilization. Its olives, its remarkable pictures, its history. It's a great thing to come from Australia which has none of this to come to this remarkable compost heap of civilisation."
Olsen returned to Australia convinced that his place as an artist was here. Since the '60s, he has been a self-described "wandering minstrel, wandering through a strange landscape".
Sydney was for many years the focus of his painting, in particular the harbour which he describes as a "big blue bitch ... And for a long period of time because of my childhood at Bondi, the sea was my point of fascination. It represented all those things of youth and joy and love."
In 1972, John Olsen was commissioned to paint a huge mural for the Sydney Opera House. Inspired by a poem by Kenneth Slessor, he called it Salute to Five Bells — the story of Slessor's friend Joe Lynch who drowned off a ferry.
Over the years, Olsen has travelled much through the country, living in places like the old goldmining town of Hill End, on a Victorian commune with Clifton Pugh, and to the South Australian countryside where he painted some of his most lyrical work.
But there has been one constant in Olsen's art. In 1974, he travelled to Lake Eyre when it was flooded for only the second time in recorded history. It was a pivotal moment for the artist.
"Seeing it flooded in all this eruption of life forms ... was a kind of philosophical event for him, because it told him that there was something in the heart of the country that was feeding the perimeters and yet we thought it was the other way around," explained curator Barry Pearce.
Since then, he's been back many times, most recently last year when the lake had all but dried up. Sunday's cameras travelled to the so-called "dead heart" with Olsen and fellow painter Tim Storrier.
>He arrived just months after a major knee operation which meant he was unable to stand and paint for most of last year. But then came Lake Eyre and renewed inspiration.
"It's infinitely mysterious and I am only really touching it, I am only really saying 'hey this is worth looking at' and there are still many Australias to be discovered."
Last year, John Olsen was awarded the gold medal from the Painters and Sculptors Association. It was only fourth time it has been given and meant much to Olsen because it was recognition by his own peers of a lifetime's achievement.