John Olsen

The artist, 82, tells what he knows about…

Painting: Its always instinctive. I move towards an idea, exploring. I become the landscape, flower, frog as I paint them. I never plan how a finished painting will look. Don’t be to intellectually involved in meaning, because somehow meaning looks after itself.

The muse: When a painting’s going well, and the muse is smiling upon you, it feels like you’re in a state of grace. A very intimate conversation occurs between me and the painting. It tells me: “Lick more paint on here; stroke me there; now tickle me.” I’m caressing it with my brushes. But sometimes the muse is out to deceive you, or it goes on a picnic, so you hit a lump. You thing, “God, this is terrible, I’ve gone the wrong way.” You’re addled with remorse and grief – but never destroy the painting. Turn its face to the wall, wait six to 12 months and astonishingly it’s often not as bad as you thought. You see possibilities. 

Colour: I’m mad about egg-yolk colours, cadmium yellow. As a light cerulean blue, a touch of white, and it’s the spirit of Australia: so optimistic, very juicy fruit.

Paint: Watercolours are so sexy. Take a pool of blue, drop in a little yellow, and slowly the two bleed into each other in a kind of marriage. It’s awfully fecund; it ought to be banned, really. Oil paint is so delicious, fleshy – it ought to be banned, too! 

Creative Block: You need resources. Follow the poet W.B. Yeats’s advice and have a team of circus animals to draw upon, and bring out a different theme.

Depression: It’s billabong time, the story of a disappointed river. Often hits artists badly around age 40, with loss of self confidence. It calls for courage; don’t blame others and, for heaven’s sake, don’t give up, because that ain’t going to get you out of the billabong back into the river.

Using imagination: People are forgetting how. The problem with the Internet and computers is, the information is all exterior. Imagination requires an interior understanding. If you read poetry, which I do daily, you must let it come inside you to grasp it’s meaning. 

Information overload: Despite today’s massive increase in information, there seems no parallel increase in wisdom.

Love: Love is a moveable feast. Love in older life is a refined sensibility. Its not hastened by sex, though there is that part of in it, but there’s a greater appreciation, a greater delectation. Its like old wine, to be savoured slowly.

Marriage: There might have been one hell of a row, or some point of disputation where one feels silly pride, but forgiveness is vital. Go out and paint the fence every morning.

Being called Australia’s greatest living artist: A terrible burden. If only it helped you paint better pictures, but it doesn’t. People expect you to paint a Rembrandt masterpiece everyday, which is nonsense; no one can do that. Right now, I’m painting a raw prawn. It’s such fun; I love its interrogating feelers. I’m not going to be Rembrandt today.