Two of Us
The Sydney Morning Herald October 19th, 2013
Rosamund Burton
Anh's story
Early last year I walked into the local butcher and there was this breathtaking painting. I'd started getting serious about art again, and I thought, "I want lessons from this guy." I looked him up on the internet and he's a 10-times Archibald finalist. When I rang him, he told me his wife was reading my book.
I'd come to his studio and we'd paint for hours. I stopped getting lessons after about a dozen, but Paul would call and say, "Come and paint some more." We just enjoy each other's company.
After school I wanted to become a painter, but I got into law. So I did a law degree and a fine-arts course at TAFE simultaneously. Then I became a comedian. But recently I've been getting back into painting, and being mentored by Paul has been wonderful.
We see each other every week and we talk on the phone. I'll call him about a new gallery or a show, and we'll talk about obscure artists. It's like kids sharing football cards.
It's like finding a kindred spirit, meeting someone who every time he picks up a paint brush wants to make it brilliant. Recently, Paul said, "You're good enough to get a gallery." I was at Olsen Irwin, which is Paul's gallery, and I had a couple of paintings in the car, so I showed them to Rex Irwin, and the next day I got a phone call saying I've got a show in 2015. I'm very happy.
I want to explain to Paul the difference between being humble and underestimating yourself. I asked him who represented him in Melbourne and he said he didn't have a gallery there. I said, "Mate, ask some galleries for representation."
So he's been doing that and getting galleries. He doesn't realise how brilliant he is.
He's got an oddball sense of humour. I laugh most when he forgets I'm there and starts singing to himself and doing this old-man shuffle while he's painting. And he's got really strange taste in music. I pretend I like it because I'm in his studio.
We're painting, and he goes, "Anh, a number of years ago I found out that my biological father was actually a priest." His mother flew to New Zealand to have the baby in secret. Paul was adopted by a couple there and later brought to Australia. He said he has no ill feeling towards his biological father, and would like to meet him. I didn't see my father between the ages of 13 and 22, then made contact again, and now he's my best friend, so I've been encouraging Paul to get in touch with him. Paul was told his father was a Jesuit priest. I went to a Jesuit school, so I made some calls and between the two of us we found a phone number. Paul called it and left some messages, but never heard back.
Paul had all these ideas for the Blake Prize, the art award based on spirituality and religion. I said, "You've got to paint your dad." He's come up with this idea that I love as a concept.
My own dad left the family when I was 13, so I have a habit of making friends with guys who I look up to, and Paul is one of those. He's really gentle and softly spoken. He's also very intelligent. He stopped teaching me art a long time ago, but he's still teaching me about life.
I seem outgoing, because my job means I have to portray certain extrovert qualities, and he comes across as a quiet person, but we're actually very alike - two guys who love painting.
Paul's story
With Anh I felt immediately like I knew him. And it's easy to like someone who says wonderful things about your paintings, so we hit it off straight away.
I've never ever seen someone work so hard, be so dedicated and come so far in a short space of time. It was exciting to see him so enthusiastic and loving it so much. I'm a painter who uses very thick painting techniques and he said he always wanted to use thick paint, but was too poor when he first studied art in his student days.
Anh knows that sometimes what he's taking on is difficult, but he has an incredible sense of self-belief and is relentlessly positive. I like digging deep into the darker side of human nature and that's an important part of who I am as an artist. So that's where we differ, but what I'm getting from Anh is that you need to remain a positive person to produce good work. He has secured an exhibition already. It took me 10 years to get a gallery as good as Olsen Irwin, and Anh has secured a show having only been painting seriously for 12 months. But he's been given it because his work is good enough.
It's become more than a teacher-student relationship. He's watching me paint and learning from decades of experience. I'm learning from him ways of pushing my career into as many different places as possible and building on it.
We entered the Tasmanian Bay of Fires art prize together. It was his first art prize and he became a finalist. I won the art prize, which was $20,000, and Anh was runner-up in the people's choice prize. I flew down with my family to the show and Anh's painting looked amazing. I thought, "Wow, that's my student, and it's a great painting." In my eyes it was good enough to be considered as a potential winning painting.
I find it hard to understand why Anh is driven to be so successful at whatever he does. Maybe that has something to do with having to prove himself as a young man, because his father was gone. I'm guessing it would have been a significant moment in his young life when his dad left. Anh and I both have a complicated idea of who our fathers are.
I'd always known I was adopted, but later I discovered my biological father was a priest. When my son was born, 12 years ago, I wrote to an address I had for him and then I let it go. When I told Anh he said, "You need to try to contact him again." When I called, I got an answering machine and left a message, but there was no response. I don't even know if he's still alive.
My painting for the Blake Prize is part of a series I'm doing of plywood cut-outs like you would see in the old carnivals. You put your face through this bit of timber and on the front was the strong man, or the bearded lady. In this piece there are two figures. One is me aged five and the other is a priest with no face. It's just a hole cut out. The painting talks about the fact that I have this father, and I don't know who he is.
Anh prompting me to contact my father was definitely a catalyst for this piece. I hadn't thought of doing an art work about this until I met Anh. It's the most personal thing I've ever made.