Introduction

Birth date

Second birthday in Cape Town

Glad to be in Australia

Father was a miner

Not close to family

Meeting Joe Wescott

Verandah school room

Skipped from school

White Lady

Aesop's fables

Back to school

A self-taught painter

Paint was the language I needed

Becoming an engineer

Emulate grandfather

BHP school

Serving an apprenticeship

Choosing a field

Working as a marine engineer

First painting

Art as a vocation

Cultural education in a fortnight

Visiting the art gallery

Postcards of paintings

1947

Worrying about the Maitland floods

Newcastle art prize

Materials not money

Meeting William Dobell

Instruction in painting

Renoir's emulsion

Around at Dobell's

A gouache in a metter of seconds

From mat to AGNSW

Moving to Sydney

Hal Missingham

Meeting Paul Beadle

Talking with Ruth Tuck

Performing paint

Drawing with Ruth

The Dobell Art Award

The Rockdale Art Prize

Adam and Eve

A more serious artist

The Christus Prize

A turning point?

The Head of Christ

The Flagellation

Sharing the kitchen table

Winning the Blake Prize

Befriending Patrick White

Director of Blaxland Art Gallery

Voss

The Musswelbrook Art Award

Friends with Manolly

Disintegrating friendship

Exhibiting in London

Going overseas

East Sydney Tech

Exhibiting in Paris and London

The Australian Exhibition at the Tate

Meeting British abstract painters

The St Ives studio

A Four Corners episode

Time with Barbara Hepworth

Affect of being in Europe

A belittling experience

Not the best paintings, just different

Experimenting with paints

The Holy Grail of art

BMG Art Gallery exhiition

Robert Hughes criticism

A most severe critic

Defended aginst Robert Hughes

The Archibald prize

Patrick White portrait

Burned Patrick White portrait

Not a great deal of store in paintings

Not an enjoyable occupation

A cluttered mind

Grandfather's gift

Whittling

Painting the landscape

Search for the landscape

Christmas cards

Abstract impressionism in Australia

Preliminary sketches

Making abstract marks

A skeleton of a landscape

Filling in the skeleton

Figures in the landscape

A congestion of marks

Contemplation

Yellow Waters in Kakadu

Spending time with Aboriginal elders

Changing palette

Experimenting with polymer paints

Fascinated by textures

Sand and stone dust

Ochres

Symbols are important

The middle years

Moved by moonlit landscape

Abstraction not enough

Owl killing

Fishing without bait

Cruel with robber gulls

The mullet run in Lake Macquarie

Patrick White and Coast Wind

An end to painting

Still a hunger

Painting in the Daintree

The importance of travel

Not good with imagination

A form of writing

Philosophy of teaching

Not liked by some people

Painting and a few beers

Span of my teaching

An Honorary Doctorate

Bedford College

Being chastised

Never a formal art lesson

Concotions

text

Conclusion

Credits