Cirrus@Austlit

'This landmark biography by Darleen Bungey, the author of the celebrated biography of Arthur Boyd, graphically depicts the forces that drove John Olsen to become one of the country's greatest artists. An exhilarating book, both trenchant and tender, it strips away the veneer of showmanship and fame to show the substance of a painter driven by a need to depict his country's landscape as Australians had never seen it before.

'Given access to his uncensored diaries and drawing on years of extensive interviews with both Olsen and those who have known him best, she explores his passionate life and follows his navigation though the friendships, rivalries and politics of the Australian art world. How did a shy, stuttering boy from Newcastle, neglected by his alcoholic father, come to paint the great mural Salute to Five Bells at the Sydney Opera House?

'This biography follows that journey - through Olsen's early experiences in the bush, particularly a formative period at Yass (a time previously unrecorded), to years of cleaning jobs to pay his way through art school, to a milestone time spent in France and Spain - and traces his constant travels and relocations within Australia, including his epic journeys into the outback and to Kati thanda-Lake Eyre.

'From a child who was never taken to an art gallery, who learnt how to draw from comics, we come to see the famous artist in the black beret, the writer and poet, the engaging public speaker, the bon vivant - whose life has been defined by an absolute need to paint.' (Publication summary)

'Arthur Boyd's legacy is a collection of masterpieces that define the history of Australian art in the last century. But the man himself-enigmatic, inarticulate, modest-has remained in the shadows until now.

'Based on over six years of meticulous research and hundreds of interviews, Darleen Bungey sweeps us into the intimate circle of one of Australia's most fascinating families. Arthur Boyd emerges as a passionate, dramatic figure whose self-effacing demeanour cloacked a strong personality that refused to allow his turbulent and sometimes tragic personal life to interfere with his creative genius.

'From Victoria's bohemian enclaves to the heady swirl of Melbourne and London in the years of artistic and social revolution, to the rural removes of Suffolk and the Shoalhaven, this is a journey into the mind and heart of a complex man whose absolute commitment to his art thrust aside personal adversity in the relentless pursuit of his work.

'There are art books and there are biographies. Arthur Boyd: A life is rare - a revelation of an artist's life as compelling as the writing about his art.' (Publication summary)