Featured Artist Profile: William Robinson

William Robinson, born 1936 in Brisbane, until his untimely death in August this year, was widely regarded as one of Australia’s most distinguished contemporary artists, best known for his landscape and portrait painting. Robinson was – and will remain – critically acclaimed for for his arresting landscape compositions of Southeast Queensland rainforests and seascapes of northern New South Wales. Robinson’s landscapes, with their multiple, ever-shifting perspectives generate a hallucinatory yet real experience of the Australian bush complete with trepidation and awe. His portraits and farmyard paintings are widely adored with their quintessential hint of Robinson humour and sense of play highlighting his spirit and sensitivity for both his subjects, and the act of painting itself.

After graduating in 1962 from Brisbane’s Central Technical College, an early forerunner of Queensland University of Technology’s Gardens Point Campus, he began a long and distinguished career teaching art. Awarded the Archibald Prize by the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1987, Robinson’s winning portrait was the point of much commotion in the art world due to the artist’s low profile – a result of teaching in Brisbane and living off-grid in Beechmont in the Gold Coast Hinterland’s Scenic Rim. Having garnered critical acclaim and recognition of his painting practice, Robinson left teaching in 1989 to work full time as an artist and since then his work has achieved further national prominence.

He was twice the recipient of the Archibald Prize (1987 and 1995) and Wynne Prize (1990 and 1996) from the Art Gallery of New South Wales. In 2001 Darkness and Light – The Art of William Robinson was published to accompany the large-scale retrospective of some 90 works exhibited at the Queensland Art Gallery in 2001 and which toured to the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra in 2002. He was honoured by the Queensland Government in 2004 as one of Queensland’s Greats. He was awarded Honorary Doctorates by three Universities – the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba; Griffith University, Brisbane; and Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane. In 2007, he was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for his outstanding achievement and service to the arts.

In 2009 the William Robinson Gallery was founded at Old Government House in QUT’s Garden’s Point Campus. The William Robinson Gallery honours the life and work of this distinguished contemporary Australian artist, presenting annual exhibitions, producing publications and films, conducting research on the artist’s practice and holding the largest public collection of Robinson’s work in the world. Robinson’s work is represented in all major Australian public art museums as well as in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Vatican Museums, Vatican City; and the British Museum, London.

Further examples of the work of Robinson are depicted below.

The Estate of William Robinson is represented by Philip Bacon Galleries, Brisbane.