Nicholas Harding
Nicholas Harding: A problem solved in every picture
Sydney Morning HeraldJohn McDonald
8 November 2022
When Nicholas Harding was awarded the 2022 Wynne Prize for landscape, one sensed it wasn’t simply a vote for a single painting, but for a lifetime’s achievement. This is not to detract from that winning canvas, Eora, a vast bushland scene, almost 2 by 4 metres – a scale that might have intimidated most artists, let alone one who was battling a deadly illness.
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'He found beauty and colour everywhere': celebrating the life of Nicholas Harding
The GuardianDavid Marr
3 November 2022
Nicholas Harding has died.
The cancer they thought they’d beaten returned to take him the other day at the age of 66. We lost a good man and beautiful painter whose work is loved.
He could paint a stretch of bush or an umbrella in the sand and make you think you were seeing them for the first time. He did beauty with absolute bravado. One of his flame trees in full bloom is a dazzling sight. But then he painted a patch of railway tracks that takes your breath away.
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VIDEO TOUR OF NICHOLAS HARDING EXHIBITION
October 2020Video tour of the Nicholas Harding exhibition, From the Wings, showing at OLSEN Gallery September - 10 October 2020
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Nicholas Harding From The Wings
Beyond the sexy blockbuster lies the truth
The AustralianChristopher Allen
4.9.2020
Contemporary art needs more work like this: eloquent but not reducible to convenient and approved formulas.
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Nicholas Harding Landscape and Birds
VIRTUAL TOUR
August 2020View the virtual tour of the Nicolas Harding 'Landscape and Bird' exhibition
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Related exhibition
Nicholas Harding Landscape and Birds
Nicholas Harding | Art of Music
June 2018ART OF MUSIC is one of the most talked about fundraisers on the Sydney event circuit. There is no other like it.
Presented by Jenny Morris, ART OF MUSIC combines both visual arts and music. Held every two years, a group of Australia's top artists come together to create an original exhibition where each artist chooses an iconic Australian/NZ song to inspire a piece of artwork. The artwork is then auctioned during a gala dinner in the spectacular Grand Court of the Art Gallery of NSW. All proceeds go to Nordoff-Robbins Music Therapy, an inspirational charity that use the power of music to transform lives.
Congratulations to Nicholas Harding on his participation in the event with his work : Private Universe (Neil Finn) 2018 oil on linen 112x107cm (featured)
CONGRATULATIONS to Nicholas Harding finalist in the 2017 WYNNE Prize as well as a finalist in the 2017 Archibald Prize for his portrait of John Olsen. Wilpena eucalypt and wattle, 2017, oil on linen, 183 x 245 cm
Wilpena Pound is an amphitheatre of mountains in South Australia's Flinders Ranges National Park. Nicholas Harding describes his response to working from this landscape: 'Reflected sky pooling in stream water. Wattle blooms amongst bark and bough. Bleaching light refracted through twigs and leaves. Birdsong and insect buzz.
"John's irrepressible joie de vivre, in both his personality and work, was something I wanted to paint. This request was politely denied," says Harding. "Last year, however, after painting Tim for a National Portrait Gallery exhibition, he asked if I'd like to paint John. Then a sitting became impossible with the worsening of John's wife?s illness. Sadly, just before Christmas, Katherine died."
In January, John had his 89th birthday. He had been involved with his major retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria, then its imminent opening at the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He was also painting new work for an exhibition in March. It was a time of mortal loss, emotional exhaustion and great achievement. At this profoundly complex moment of his life, with great generosity, John sat for me in his studio. The winners of the Wynne Prize and the Archibald will be announced on the 28th of July 2017.
Christopher Allen
11 November 2017
Once, it seemed almost a mirable that art could capture the appearance of a man or woman, allowing them to live on in effigy for centuries after their disappearance...
Review of Nicolas Harding: 28 Portraits, National Portrait Gallery, Canberra. Until November 26.
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Related exhibition
Nicholas Harding
Ron Cerabona
22 October 2017
In discussing what made a good portrait artist, Nicholas Harding cited a Chinese saying that it took "the head, the heart and the hand".
Harding - who won the 2001 Archibald Prize for a portrait of John Bell as King Lear - was at the National Portrait Gallery on Friday to talk about his exhibition Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits which is on display until November 26. Curated by Dr Sarah Engledow, it features works in a range of media including oil paintings of actor Hugo Weaving and writer Robert Drewe, gouache paintings of Harding's mother-in-law Edie Watkins and actress Anna Volska, and spur-of-the-moment drawings of airline passengers drawn on refuse and airsick bags.
Image: Artist Nicholas Harding at his exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits. Photo: Jamila Toderas
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Nicholas Harding
Andrew Taylor
May 3-4 2014
It began, like many artistic endeavours, in Paris. The city where Samuel Beckett wrote En Attendant Godot in 1948, which he translated into Waiting for Godot and later premiered at the Theatre de Babylone in 1953, would draw artist Nicholas Harding into that absurdist drama six decades later.
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Elissa Blake
Feb 2013
In a loft studio in the old Westons biscuit factory in Camperdown, Nicholas Harding is trying to find a clean chair to sit on. Everything in the room - the easels, his shoes, the floor - is covered in dollops of dried paint that appear to be building up like a coral reef.
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