John Olsen’s Australian landscapes captured the world’s imagination but to his son the artist was akin to a deity – until he wasn’t
Where there is artistic acclaim there is often collateral damage. History is littered with redundant muses, discarded partners, children left behind. It can take a certain ruthlessness to live for art, in a heightened state of intensity, making it the only thing that matters.
In the 60s the art critic Robert Hughes described John Olsen as a person who “disregards what matters to others, the things in between”. For Olsen’s son, Tim, his father’s painting was “a crucible undisputed in our house”. The art came first; an absolute compulsion for the artist, and the family revolved around it. “We protected it like a ritual flame that had to be relit each morning,” Tim writes in his newly published memoir, Son of the Brush.
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