John Olsen remembered as a ‘poet of the brush’

John Olsen has been remembered as an artist of deeply personal vision whose unique perspectives encouraged people to look at their world differently.

Tim and Louise Olsen flank their father, John Olsen, who died this week aged 95.

John Olsen was an artist to the end, working on four paintings in his Southern Highlands studio near Sydney at the weekend before he put down his brush for the last time.

Olsen, who died on Tuesday at 95, has been remembered as an artist of deeply personal vision whose unique perspectives encouraged people to look at their world differently.

To his good friend, restaurateur Lucio Galletto, he was the ­maestro. To son Tim Olsen, he was a titan of the art world, larger than life, and also Dad.

Anthony Albanese said he was a “poet of the brush, a truly great explorer and interpreter of the Australian landscape”.

Thousands of people will have the opportunity to experience Olsen’s art when his work is projected on to the exterior sails of the Sydney Opera House as part of May’s Vivid Sydney festival.

Part of John Olsen’s oil painting Five Bells. Photo courtesy Art Gallery of New South Wales

John Olsen painting the Salute to Five Bells mural.

Art works including Olsen’s great mural painting at the Opera House – Salute to Five Bells – will be subtly animated and projected in a project called Lighting of the Sails: Life Enlivened.

Through a career spanning more than 60 years, Olsen developed a personal, instantly recognisable visual language, with explosions of colour and coiling tendrils of line. His paintings were often landscapes but more about the feeling or spirit of a place.

Tim Olsen said for his father, “art was like breathing”.

In his studio last Saturday, he completed a painting of a kitchen scene and three of Lake Eyre, working from photos Tim had taken of the flooded inland lake, full of life. The paintings complete, he’d given them a “last tickle” and signed them.

Tim Olsen said he recalled many parties where his father would entertain guests, including Patrick White, Barry Humphries, Don Dunstan, Gough Whitlam and – an occasion that impressed young Tim – Patrick Macnee from The Avengers. “He was a man for all seasons,” he said. “He wasn’t politically bent to left or right, he was always about the man or the woman, and always supportive of people who believed in creativity.”

He also enjoyed playing the bon vivant. Lunches at Lucio’s restaurant in Sydney’s Paddington became an event, Galletto recalled, with Olsen entering the establishment in a kind of “aura” and making impromptu drawings for other diners.

Tim Olsen said his father also valued the quiet attentiveness his art demanded. “He was, in a way, a paradox: wanting to be around people and wanting his solitude,” he said. “Ironically, he would have a wonderful lunch with people and later that evening he’d go into the studio and work alone.”

Michael Brand, director of the Art Gallery of NSW, said Olsen lived the life of a public artist. When he was a young man, he had joined protests against what was viewed as a staid atmosphere at the gallery and its drearily predictable Archibald Prize. Olsen would later serve on the gallery board of trustees, from 1976 to 1981, and he won the Archibald in 2005 with Self-portrait Janus-Faced.

Brand said Olsen’s painting Five Bells – like the Opera House mural, it was inspired by Kenneth Slessor’s poem – was one of the most popular works in the gallery.

“He made a huge contribution to Australian art, and helped Australians rethink the way they look at the landscape,” he said.

“He leaves a body of work that will inspire artists and the general public alike.”

Lang Walker, executive chair of Walker Corporation and an avid collector of Olsen’s work, commissioned Olsen to paint another large painting, King Sun, for Collins Square Towers in Melbourne.

“John was a unique talent whose vibrant colours and shapes have served to light up our lobbies and offices around the country, with King Sun taking pride of place,” he said. “Those bright colours were a great match for his extraordinary personality, which was larger than life.”

Louise Herron, CEO of the Sydney Opera House, said Olsen had recently seen a draft animation of Lighting of the Sails and was delighted. “He spoke about the project being a full circle for him, and the opportunity for the public to see his work in such a grand way was the biggest gift of all,” she said.

Olsen died at Bowral with Tim and Louise at his side.