Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd

Arthur Boyd is considered one of Australia’s most significant modern artists. He was born in Murrumbeena, Melbourne, and 24th July 1920. His parents were both potters and painters. Through his practice as a painter, he expresses a multitude of emotions and messages. Boyd loved the Australian bush and landscape. When he returned to Australia in 1971, he bought properties at Bundanon, near Shoalhaven, in New South Wales. It was a single-storey weather house, and then a two-storey sandstone house was built in front of it. He donated this property to the people of Australia because he was inspired by the landscape there. After that, he mainly painted about the Australian bush. Boyd never attended any formal art classes. He just had night classes at the National Gallery Art School, Melbourne. When he was 17, he went to live with his grandfather, who taught him the first principles of painting. In 1960, Boyd moved to Hampstead, London because he took an interest to European paintings. He moved there with his wife and three kids. When he was in London, he worked around the theme ‘metamorphosis’, which has to do with rocks. He spent about ten years in Europe.

Arthur Boyd was influenced by his family’s artistic endeavours. His father, Merric Boyd, was a potter and sculptor. His mother, Doris Boyd was a painter and potter. His grandparents, Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie Boyd were landscape painters. His uncle and siblings were also painters and potters. He was also inspired a lot by the old testament of the bible, to which he responded by painting the ‘Nebuchadnezzar’ series.

A lot of his work has to do with issues about Australian culture, for example, his “Half-caste bride’ series was about the difficulties and struggles the indigenous people of Australia were having at the time. Along with a group of other artists, whom Boyd had worked with, Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and John Perceval, Boyd was a member of the group called “The...