“Apart from our First Nation artists,he changed the perspective and way that Australians looked at our magnificent landscape,” Tim said on Tuesday. “He was a landscape poet to the end and a titan of the Australian art world.”
Born in Newcastle in 1928,Olsen studied art at Julian Ashton Art School,cleaning offices at night. He then enrolled at East Sydney Technical College,where he was taught by John Passmore,and quickly made a name for himself for his studio discipline and love of life. “It took a lot of courage to be an artist in those days and he had no hesitation but to run with it and in art he found his calling,” Tim said.
Sponsored by art collector Robert Shaw,Olsen moved to Europe,studied printmaking under Stanley William Hayter in Paris,and lived in an artist colony in Mallorca where he met the poet and historian Robert Graves.
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It was Graves who told Olsen:“You can paint pretty pictures all your life but without metaphor you’ve got nothing. Read avidly and embrace poetry.”
“And for the rest of his life John never ran out of ideas,” Tim said.
Olsen returned to Australia inspired to paint the nature and landscapes of his own country,and created the series Journey into the you beaut country,which was to cement his place among Australia’s artistic visionaries. “When art was taking itself so seriously he brought in the whimsical,” Tim said. “He was one of those artists where people could look at his work and smile.”