Storrier working in his Bowral studio. Photo: James Brickwood
Artist Tim Storrier might say of the art establishment that if you want a friend in the art world get a dog - or a stuffed dog.
The perfectly preserved remains of his beloved fox terrier, Smudge, lie splayed on a mantelpiece in the stateroom of Storrier’s Dutch colonial mansion near Bowral. It looks lifelike until you realise it's motionless.
This prompts the question: why would the artist go to the trouble and expense of having his deceased dog stuffed and exhibited on a mantelpiece, rather than simply burying the remains in the garden?
Storrier would say that since he loved Smudge who was his best friend, apart from his wife - and maybe including his wife - the least he could do was to mummify the dog's remains. Smudge died by snakebite in 2012.
The story of the artist and the stuffed dog probably tells you more about Storrier, the loner estranged from the art establishment, than six books, multiples profiles, art criticism as far as the eye can see, and, sometimes, sneering reviews of the work of the man who is almost certainly Australia’s most commercially successful living artist – under-represented in the nation’s galleries - now that Jeffrey Smart has passed from the scene.
In Storrier’s case, the man who is, arguably, the country’s most politically revisionist artist in a friendless sea of progressives is about to undergo not so much a renaissance but a commercial spurt, as if a commercially successful squire of the Southern Highlands needs the money.
Wendy Whiteley launches Lou Klepac’s richly illustrated book, Tim Storrier, at the National Art School on Wednesday to be followed by an exhibition of his work at the Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane.
Tim Storrier is no fan of the art establishment. Photo: James Brickwood
Australian Galleries will exhibit Storrier exclusively in September as part of Sydney Contemporary, billed as Australasia’s premier international art fair.
Storrier became an instant celebrity when at age 19 he was the youngest artist ever to be awarded the Sulman Prize.
That early recognition, he admits to Klepac, probably gave him and a ''very swelled head early for a short time'' but also gave him the necessary impetus to pursue a career as a painter.
Klepac, who was commissioned by Storrier to write this latest appreciation, puts him in the same league as Whiteley and Olsen, each born 10 years apart, a generation among artists - Olsen in 1928 and still with us; Whiteley in 1939; and Storrier in 1949. All were - or are - mates.
Storrier was the one to call the police to identify Whiteley when he was found dead in Thirroul. Olsen introduced Storrier to the beauty of Lake Eyre in 2000.
Fairfax art critic John McDonald does not sneer, nor does he get carried away with Storrier’s exceptional skills as a draftsman.
“One thinks of Picasso’s famous claim that it took him four years to paint like Raphael, and the rest of his life learning to paint like a child. Storrier has not given up on Raphael,'' McDonald said in 2011.
In the Philip Bacon and Australian Galleries offerings, Storrier's work will follow familiar themes of vast landscapes, fire, tempest, cloud formations that billow into the distance, and, of course, his Impedimenta series in acrylic and in bronze sculptures.
Bacon has long represented Storrier. He says that in the vastness of his landscapes and the into-the-void of his Impedimenta works, in which a swagman is lost in an Australian emptiness, his themes are “so Australian’’.
Stuart Purves of the Australian Galleries says simply Storrier dwells on “loneliness and isolation’’, possibly related to his upbringing on a cattle station in central NSW.
“His work is about where people have been and not where they are going’’, Purves says.
His Impedimenta series has evolved from his 2012 Archibald-winning The Histrionic Wayfarer in which an “itinerant painter’’ is, in Storrier’s own words, a “passenger on the endless road to oblivion; in search of enlightenment, he stumbles on’’.
Leaving aside criticism from members of the “art mafia’’ about a portrait “without a face’’, this work may, over time, come to be regarded as one the great metaphysical descriptions of the Australian condition.
Interviewed in his Bowral studios, Storrier talks a lot about art and politics, the vicissitudes of dealing with the art establishment, his friendships with Whiteley, Olsen and satirist Barry Humphries, and, well, life.
On his studio walls hang his compelling Humphries as Les Patterson, all teeth, and spittle and sagging jowls and torso.
On his failure, last year to “get hung’’ in the Archibald and then winning the other premier portrait prize, the Moran, for a portrait of the artist McLean Edwards, he observes the Archibald judges are ''subjected to these current fashionable [post-modernist] trends''.
He recalls a conversation with a gallery director at the time who said there were “no old white men in suits in the Archibald’’ last year.
“So, then I kinda figured it out, ‘'well, he’s not that young and he’s got a suit on and I’m certainly not young I’ve got a suit on, is he talking to me?’’ Storrier chuckles.
When I put these observations to a gallery owner who is a Storrier fan, he laughed and said: “Tim’s had a hard time because he’s always been enormously successful independent of art curators. On top of that, he calls a spade a shovel.’’
That said, the artist might seem a bit obsessive. In his view, post-modernism has "degenerated into Neo Marxist Post Modernism’’.
This means modern Australian painting has drifted away from its roots defined by Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Frederick McCubbin and George Lambert.
If there is an artist of the older school with whom he would like to be compared it’s Lambert whose Across the Black Soil Plains is “a quiet insistent inspiration’’.
Of Storrier’s conservative politics in an ocean of art establishment progressives, Klepac says: “In a way his politics allows him to be left alone. It’s a moat around him.’’
Asked if a pre-modernist description would encapsulate his work, Storrier says: “I may be painting pre-modernist pictures. Maybe, I hope so. ‘’
Tim Storrier's work will be exhibited at Philip Bacon Galleries, Fortitude
Valley, August 28 to September 22 and Australian Galleries at Sydney Contemporary, September 13-16.