Peter Pinson: It is Australia Day, 2013. This conversation with Guy Warren is taking place in his studio on Mackenzie Street in the inner western suburb in Sydney, of Leichhardt.

Guy Warren, after you left school, you went to work at the magazine, The Bulletin. How did that lead to your beginning to study art?

Guy Warren: I had to leave school at 14. The family was broke, and it was Depression years. I got a job at The Bulletin as a proofreader's assistant, which was good in many ways because it was a sort of education. I had read everything that went into the paper.

But it affected my art...my life tremendously, insofar as the arts editor of The Bulletin was a bloke called John Frith. The Bulletin in those days was full of cartoonists...very good joke cartoonists. It had a reputation for that sort of thing.

So I badgered him regularly with cartoons, hoping to be able to end up as a cartoonist. He obviously thought they were appalling, which they probably were. He grabbed me by the arm one day and dragged me out of the office, up the street on George Street and round the corner, took me up a couple flights of stairs, and threw me through some big swing doors.

There was a little old man sitting there who, I found, ran a little private art school. His name was J.S. Watkins. He was a trustee of the Sydney Art Gallery. He had studied in Paris. Member of the Society of Artists, a good painter. He was running a little art school of his own.

This bloke from The Bulletin sort of threw me in and said, "Teach this kid to draw!" I could afford one night a week after work. And then I could afford, eventually, after a year or so, two nights a week. And then after three years, I could afford two nights a week and Saturday afternoons, as well.

By the time I volunteered for the Army in, whenever I was, '20, '21 or something, I could draw reasonably well. I had had several years of good, solid drawing training. It was nothing to do with art, it was about being able to draw what you saw in front of you.

But it was enormously useful. It stood me in good stead during the War. I was able to draw wherever I was. Being a soldier is pretty boring most of the time. Most soldiers play cards or do something in their spare time. That bored the hell out of me, so I used to draw.

So, yes. I'm enormously grateful to him, to that man. He changed my life.

Peter Pinson: Did you meet other soldiers who were artists or who would become significant artists after the war?

Guy Warren: Yes indeed, I did...several of them. One was a very good sculptor named Oliffe Richmond, whose name, unfortunately, is not terribly well known in this country. He went to London, became an assistant for Henry Moore, and died very early at about 50.

Oliffe Richmond and I shared a troop ship with...on the way to New Guinea. Troop ships were marvellous, full of bored Australian soldiers leaning over the edge, playing cards, whatever. Oliffe and I spent the whole...I think it was about 10 days to get up to New Guinea in those days. We spent the whole time drawing. We had free models for 10 days, and then I spent a couple days in Lae drawing with him.

Who else? I served most of my time on the island of Bougainville - which is several hours' flying to the east of New Guinea...Very large island with volcanoes right down the centre of it. And there I met Tommy Thompson, who subsequently became head of the art school... the National Art School, in Sydney, and another artist named David Lawrance, who went to Melbourne eventually and became, I think, a conservator for the museum of Melbourne.

Peter Pinson: At the National Gallery of Victoria.

Guy Warren: At the National Gallery of Victoria, yeah.

Peter Pinson: After the war, your military service enabled you to study at the National Art School under the CRTS scheme. Were those years at the National Art School seminal for you?

Guy Warren: Absolutely seminal, Peter. I was enormously lucky to find myself in a group of people who were talented, keen, totally dedicated - and nice people, too, which helped - people like Oliffe Richmond, who was there, Tony Tuckson, Tom Bass...Tony Tuckson I mentioned, Klaus Friedeberger, people who were very good painters and very talented people. Bob Klippel.

Peter Pinson: After leaving the National Art School, what did you do?

Guy Warren: I worked for 12 months to earn some money so I could get the hell out of Australia. I wanted to go...as everybody did in those days, I wanted to go to England. I got enough money to be able to go as far as England and back again. I think I had my return fare. Why did we go to England? Because, I suppose, they spoke more or less the same language, and I thought, in those days you could get a job there.

I got married. We hopped on the first boat we could. Went to Naples, got off the boat at Naples, and hitchhiked from there to London, looking at everything we could find on the way - wonderful old churches with masterpieces that I'd never even heard of, and all the major galleries all the way to London. It was enormously important.

It was a great way to finish off a Tech course. Tech - the old Tech, the National Art School - was very much a skill-oriented school, so going to Europe and looking at things like this was immensely important, because there was nothing like that at the time in Sydney to look at.

There was...I don't think there were even reproductions in Sydney that weren't 50 years old. There weren't any slides at the National Art School when I was there. It was catching up, I guess, looking at real art.

Peter Pinson: This period, the early '50s, was materially lean, austere years for the British, but they were obviously very culturally rich for you. Can you remember particular things that you saw at that time that shaped your subsequent art?

Guy Warren: Yes, I can. The problem with remembering, Peter, these days, is at my age I can't usually remember what I had for breakfast. But I shall try to remember.

The '50s were great in London, because all the British artists were beginning to show again. The galleries were beginning to show their work. French, German, Italian artists were beginning to show in London - again, for the first time since the war. The first of the German Expressionists were showing again.

It was a very exciting time. They keep talking about the swinging '60s. The '50s, from my point of view, was much better. Things were beginning to bubble. Who was there? I can't remember names any longer, but all the St. Ives people were there. Pat Heron, of course...

Peter Pinson: Peter Lanyon.

Guy Warren: Peter Lanyon. That marvellous painter whose work I've always admired but whose name I forget regularly.

Peter Pinson: Ben Nicholson.

Guy Warren: Ben Nicholson, of course. A fellow who did some marvellous drawings when he was ill in bed, probably his last illness. Oh dear. Never mind.

Peter Pinson: Roger Hilton.

Guy Warren: Roger Hilton, Roger Hilton. And other painters in London, who were first... you know, were really very good painters indeed.

And then the French...then the German...sorry, the American impressionists came over. The first of the American impressionists, I remember seeing at the American Embassy. Then there was a big show at the Tate, which was either '57 or '59 or both, I can't remember. That was a blowout. I had never seen paintings that big, that expressive, that powerful in my life before. Yes, I mean it was an immense impact.

Peter Pinson: Then, at the end of the '50s, you came back to Australia. Why?

Guy Warren: Ha. [laughs] Good question. There's never one reason, Peter. There are always a half a dozen reasons - elderly parents, lack of sunshine, education for the kids, and a whole range of other things.

I think we came back because we'd been...we'd been away for eight years. We went away initially for 18 months. We stayed for eight years because we couldn't tear ourselves away from it. We came back with two kids, who we hadn't expected to have. I wanted them educated. I wanted to show them Australian life. I wanted to show them an Australian beach, I guess. There are lots of reasons for coming back.

I wasn't very happy when I came back. I thought the art scene in the early 50'...the early '60s in Australia was pretty dull, certainly in Sydney. There was only one painter who interested me, and that was Ian Fairweather. I thought Ian Fairweather, in a way, was trying do what I was doing, but doing it very much better than I. I didn't like anything else that I saw, but I admired Fairweather's work tremendously.

Peter Pinson: You showed some of your work to the director of the highly regarded Gallery A in Sydney. What did he say to you, and how did that affect your work?

Guy Warren: I think I was trying too hard, Peter. I did some work, which I thought I would take around the galleries. It was a bit too earnest. I showed him, and this well-respected director looked at them and said, "They are overcooked."

I was a bit shocked. I'd never heard that phrase before, but I took them home and looked at them, and I thought, "He's dead right. They are overcooked. They are overworked. They're too...too serious. They're just simply overworked."

So I did nothing for 12 months but watercolour. I just didn't paint on canvas for 12 months. I did nothing but watercolour. One of the joys of watercolour, as you very well know, is that you can't overcook it. If you overcook it, it dies immediately. What you put down is what you get. I thought it was a very good way of overcoming the problem.

Peter Pinson: Between 1973 and 1976, you worked as the full-time director at the Sydney University Art Workshop. Would you agree that this was a period of your work becoming much more radical in its form and objectives?

Guy Warren: Yes absolutely, but that's because everything was radical in those days. This was the beginning of the conceptual art period in Australia. It was a bit later than the rest of the world, I guess. But the only place where you could do anything like that was the Tin Sheds, which was...a non-organised...creative arts centre which simply grew up like topsy.

And the guys there were Bert Flugelman...For heaven's sake. You'd know him, the critic from the...

Peter Pinson: Donald Brook.

Guy Warren: Donald Brook. These guys had an image of what an art school might be. This wasn't an art school as in a formal art school, it was simply a place where people were encouraged to come and make art. It attracted a number of very interesting and important people. Oh dear, I can't remember their names now. Mike Parr, of course, was one. [pauses] Please, a question.

Peter Pinson: I suppose your experience at the Tin Sheds was instrumental in letting you secure the position of principal lecturer at the newly formed Sydney College of the Arts.

Guy Warren: Probably was, Peter, and that was a disappointment. The Tin Sheds worked on the principle that one went there to make art. One didn't go there necessarily to learn how to draw, how to paint, or how to take photographs, but that possibility was there.

We had people there to teach you, if that's what you wanted to do. It was...it was intended that one should be able suddenly to go to somebody if he wanted that sort of expertise. Like, if a sculptor suddenly wanted to learn how to weld, there was somebody there who could teach him how to weld.

The state government had planned work on a new art school. They asked for submissions. I put in a submission which was based on what I'd known about British art schools and what I knew about the Tin Sheds.

What I envisaged was a fairly open art school where everybody was on one campus and could wander through everybody else's space and have the opportunity to...if you were a painting student, do something else if that seemed appropriate for you to do at the time. A very open educational system.

Unfortunately, it didn't work like that. I think the accountants and the politicians somehow got in the way, and it ended up like most art schools. It was freer than some, less emphasis on skills, but certainly not the freedom that I expected. It was...there was a schism between the designers and the artists, which I never anticipated and I never did understand. In the end, the place tightened much, much more than I ever expected.

Peter Pinson: In 1985 you won the Archibald Prize with a portrait of your friend, Bert Flugelman. Did winning that prize have any effect on your career?

Guy Warren: No, I don't think so. Everybody else seems to think it should have or might have, but I can't remember anything happening. I remember hearing about one artist who won the Archibald who rang all the galleries next day and put him/her/their prices up [laughs] by double.

No, I don't think it made any difference. Maybe if I'd been more capable of being a politician or being more aware of publicity it might have. I have no idea, Peter. I don't think about it.

Peter Pinson: In 1982, you were awarded a nine month residency by the Australia Council. This enabled you to work in New York. Did New York exert any particular impact on your work?

Guy Warren: Yes, it did. It wasn't a nine month residency, it was a three month residency. I was delighted to have that. Three months in New York is fantastic. At the end of three months I had a message from the Australia Council to say that the next person to go there couldn't make it, and would I be prepared to pay for another...to stay for another three months? I, obviously, jumped at the opportunity for staying another three months.

So, that was six months. At the end of six months, the woman who owned Gallery A in Sydney...

Peter Pinson: Anne Lewis.

Guy Warren: Anne Lewis, who had an apartment in Paris, asked me if I would like to stay another three months in her apartment. So it ended up as three months. Yes, it was fantastic.

I think that the...the joy of New York at the time - it's probably still the same - is that you can work on your own all day, lonely in your own studio. And you can go out, and round the corner - literally, round the corner -- you can see the work of major artists who are doing quite astonishingly interesting, creative, intelligent things. All it did for you is to push you back into your own studio to try something harder, to try harder.

The sort of thing that I had in London in the '50s, I had in New York then. It was a great experience.

Peter Pinson: Eight years later in 1990, you were awarded a residency in Paris. Was that influential for you?

Guy Warren: Mainly the galleries, I think. I did a lot of work in Paris. I don't think there was...they were influenced by Paris. No, I don't think my work was influenced by Paris. I spent most of the time, I think, in the Louvre and the other major galleries.

Peter Pinson: For many years, you've maintained this studio in Leichhardt, which is quite a distance from your home in Greenwich. Have you found this separation of domestic life and art practice to be beneficial for you?

Guy Warren: Both. The answer is yes and no. There are times when I wish I had it at home that I could just walk out and do something. There are times when I've been grateful to get away from home and all those problems that occur at home, and face the problems that occur in the studio, and keep them separate. The only problem here is the occasional plane that goes over, which you may have heard in this recording.

Peter Pinson: What would a typical day's work be in the studio? How long would you spend here in a day?

Guy Warren: [laughs] I come here at about 9:30 or 10:00. I have to drive here. I try to avoid the traffic...the bad mid-morning traffic... the early morning traffic. I get here about ten o'clock and I work until it gets dark, probably about...if it's summer, it's seven, eight thirty, eight o'clock, something like that.

Peter Pinson: You're probably best known for your paintings of highly abstracted figures immersed in highly abstracted and comparatively untamed landscapes. What drew you to that subject?

Guy Warren: I hesitate to tell the story, because I get shot down occasionally. What happened? It all came from one particular moment on the island of Bougainville during the War.

Whenever I had the spare time, I'd draw the local people. I was drawing this big, dark fellow. I used to pay them with cigarettes or tobacco or whatever. The very...I'm not sure if you would do that now. But anyway, I had nothing to pay this big bloke with one day, so I offered him a tin of talcum powder.

Why did we have talcum powder? Because the Comforts Fund had sent it up because it thought...they thought it might help with skin disease. Well, nobody ever used it, probably because it looked a bit sissy. So I had a tin of talcum powder in the tent.

I gave this big black guy a tin of talcum powder. He immediately emptied it into his hand and made these wonderful, big, white marks all over his body.

I thought, "God! That looks fantastic!" It really was the first thing he did. And then I thought, "Of course he would do that!". Because the first thing they do is to decorate themselves. If you gave them anything at all, they'd shove it in their hair. They'd put it on their body. They had tribal markings, obviously, but they had no hesitation in decorating their body.

Now, this didn't mean much more than that to me at the time. But after I finished Tech and went to London with my wife, ten years later in the early '50s, I was painting in London, and I didn't know what the hell to paint. I had lot of skill. I could paint a good landscape. I could paint a nude. I could paint a still life. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to paint!

I didn't want to paint London. I didn't want to paint the English landscape. It was very beautiful, but it wasn't my landscape. And in desperation, without thinking about it, I started to paint my memories of New Guinea. And then I started painting people who were decorated.

And exactly at that point - we had a little black and white television set - I saw a documentary made by some bloke who'd been in New Guinea, in Mount Hagen, where there was a big dance festival.

I think he made the first documentary...black and white documentary of the dance festival in Mount Hagen. That's where dancers from all over the Pacific, particularly New Guinea, come with wonderful decorations - head dresses, body decorations, feathers. It's absolutely fantastic stuff.

I looked at this documentary and I thought, "My God! I'm only going on my memories. Wouldn't it be fun if I had something like that, that I could draw from and refresh my memory, refresh my ideas?"

So, I wrote to the BBC and said something silly like, "I'm a young Australian painter in London. I wonder if I could buy some of your stills. Because you must have had a still photographer there as well as a filmmaker."

I got a phone call about a week or ten days later from some bloke who said he thought he could help me. It turned out he'd made the film, and he had a lot of photographs. He introduced himself on the phone. He said his name was David Attenborough, and would I like to come around and have a drink with him?

So, Joy and I went around to David's place and had a drink with him, met him and his wife. Then he lent me a lot of photographs. He wouldn't sell them to me. I took them back, and working with them and my memories, I did a show in London, I had a show in London.

But before I had the show, I invited him and his wife to come around to our flat to have a look at the show, and I offered him one of the paintings. I gave him his photographs back. He took a little painting.

I have been in touch once or twice since. But I was fascinated very recently, about a year ago, to see him being interviewed by the BBC...by the ABC. It was an ABC interview by that fellow who interviews for the ABC occasionally. What the hell's his name? Andrew Denton. Thank you. It was the interview of David Attenborough by Andrew Denton. Some of the interview was taken in his living room.

While I was interested in the interview, I noticed on the wall behind him was my painting. Oddly enough, I bumped into Andrew Denton a few weeks ago in town. He was eating at the same restaurant. I was having lunch with another artist, with Ann Thompson.

So, I interrupted Denton and I said, "Look, sorry to interrupt," but I'd had a letter...because I'd written to David Attenborough telling him how good the interview was, and he wrote back to me to say it was the best interview he'd ever had. So I thought I really ought to tell Andrew Denton that. The ABC and Andrew Denton get a credit for that. They get a good mark.

Peter Pinson: You've long owned a number of acres in a wilderness area in Jamberoo, and in the past, you've worked down there. You've also gone on a number of painting expeditions with other artists. Have you found this immersion in the landscape to be nourishing for you and for your work?

Guy Warren: Yes, I do, Peter. I like rainforests, particularly, which probably comes from New Guinea and my time in the rainforest in Queensland. I like moving through there. It also has a lot to do with finding figures in the landscape. This is where I get shot down in flames, because people...

I think this is a fairly literary idea and not a particularly painterly idea, but I've always been a little unsympathetic to the idea of people who, when they paint a landscape, put a figure in it. That's putting a figure on the landscape.

And I rather have always liked the idea of the Pacific peoples' and the Australian aboriginals' idea of us being part of the landscape. Not owning the landscape, not painting the landscape simply to record it or to investigate it, but, you know, we are part of the landscape.

If I put figures in the landscape, I want them to be immersed in the landscape as though they're part of it, so sometimes my figures are so hidden in the landscape, particularly in the rainforest, that you're not even aware that they're there, but I see them there.

The land...the rainforest, of course, allows you to do that, because it is incredibly dense. You've got layer over layer over layer. It's a very dense landscape. A fairly shallow space, and dense layers, and highly textured. One can play around with it.

Otherwise, going out in the Australian bush. Yes, the space is great, but I'm not an en plein air painter. I don't like sitting on my backside on a hard rock and painting with real paint. I find that everything goes wrong. The paint falls over...the easel falls over. The birds...or the bugs fly into the paint. You know what it's like. That's why I go and draw a lot.

Peter Pinson: This is just speculation, but had, in the late '50s, you not come back to Australia; had you stayed, securing some work, perhaps teaching in England, and continued your career in England, do you think your work would have been different to the way Australia has shaped it?

Guy Warren: My work would've been different and my life would've been different. Peter, I ask myself the same question literally every day. I don't know. I think I would've possibly had trouble...I assumed at the time I would've had trouble getting a job as a teacher at an art school. Maybe it was a wrong decision. Maybe I could have got a job with them.

I'd like to have stayed in London, because at the time it was a very exciting place. Whether it still is, I don't know. I was frightened that I would've probably had to have gone into commercial art or something like that. And I couldn't have borne to do that. I wanted to paint. So we made the decision to come home.

I have no regrets about that, apart from the fact that I miss the National Gallery and the Louvre and other galleries like that, the major shows that come on. We're doing much better on now than we used to. We do get major shows now that we didn't get twenty, thirty, forty years ago.

Peter Pinson: Looking at the way your art has unfolded since your return to Australia at the end of '50s, and looking at the career choices you made, if you were having your life again, are there any things you would have done differently?

Guy Warren: God, what a question! [pauses] I would've...somehow...One of Sydney's eminent architects said to me one day, "If I were to be asked a question, what I would do if I wanted my life over again, how would I change it." And he said he would ask for courage. I thought that was a good answer.

And I've often thought about that since. I wouldn't ask for courage, I would ask for confidence, because with confidence, one can get courage. I think these days students are given confidence in schools - in art schools and in other schools. We weren't. We were told constantly that you know, you were there to be seen and not heard, not to blow your own trumpet. I've always regretted that I wasn't confident enough to ask for more.

I think, looking back at the works that have subsequently been bought by the War Museum, I could quite legitimately have tried to be a war artist. I wouldn't have been as good as the best of them. I would have certainly been better than the worst of them.

So, yes, there are lots of things that I would've done better, and they would all be related to self-confidence. That's a revealing statement, isn't it?

Peter Pinson: Guy Warren, thank you very much.

Guy Warren: Thank you, Peter. Thanks for doing it.

Credits

Interviewer: Peter Pinson

Camera, lighting & sound: Cameron Glendinning

Video editing: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen