Sam Fullbrook - Australian Artist 1922-2004.

I have the chance to visit galleries and see wonderful exhibitions in this country and this is one I want to share with you though I appreciate that seeing the actual paintings instead of their pictures is a wholly different ball game. Sam Fullbook was one of Australia's finest Painters after the Second World War.  He has passed away but while he lived, he had a bit of an itinerant life and perhaps because of it or perhaps in spite of it he produced some fabulous art which I really enjoyed.He spent large parts of his life in Queensland and had studios on the coast and in Brisbane at various times in his life.  His canvases are fluid and not specific - his portraits are somewhat similar and yet I feel, like his paintings, have so much depth and substance. I look as his landscapes like the Monsoon Sky and it is all there in the brushstrokes and the large blocks, the storm, the darkness and the rain - by contrast his Sandhills on the Darling Downs is infused with almost a glowing white light which is beautiful, almost ethereal and of course so evocative of the light in Queensland.

The Monsoon Sky 

Sandhills on the Darling downs 

This apparently could be the beach and lots of people on it or it could be an ice cream cone with lots of flavours - you choose !
I loved his portraits best of all so here are some of the best - the exhibition is on until August the 10th and is on at the Queensland Gallery of Art.

 Miss Ernestina Hill 1970, perhaps one of his best known.

 The light in this face draws you to it - yet the brush strokes are really quite broad.

This is his portrait of Jacob Oberdoo or Obaju 1957-1960 when he lived up in Northern Queensland. He refused a medal of the British Empire saying that medals were for dogs . His portrait of this stockman is one of incredible dignity. Fullbrook won the Archibald Prize for Portraiture and the Wynne Prize for Landscapes and I can see why.