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John Olsen


John Olsen relives love of Lake Eyre, ABC 7.30 Report

John Olsen, Australia's greatest living painter talks to the ABC 7.30 report about his latest body of work Lake Eyre - The Desert Sea, Ruminations on a Empty Landscape. This latest collection of watercolours, a very personal reflection of an ever-changing landscape that Olsen has visited since the 1970's, depicts the results of the recent flooding to the area and the new life that follows. This episode features interviews John Olsen, his gallerist-son Tim Olsen, grandson James and two young artists Luke Sciberras and Guy Maestri fly across the Lake as well as an interview by Edmund Capon, Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

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Related exhibition
JOHN OLSEN: Lake Eyre Ruminations on an Empty Landscape

Tim Olsen on John Olsen 'Culinaria'

We are blessed with the deliciously tasty Culinaria - The Cuisine of the Sun. An explosive feast that celebrates life and the human experience. Tim Olsen reflects on John Olsen's latest exhibition.

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Related exhibition
John Olsen Culinaria - The Cuisine of the Sun

Art Nation, featuring John Olsen and the exhibition Culinaria with Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein

This Art Nation episode features John Olsen and the exhibition Culinaria with Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein. John Olsen discusses his theories on painting food, as his memories of travel and cooking melt together to celebrate food, art and good company. Rick Stein comments on the exhibition, whilst Jamie Oliver get's involved with cooking up a feast for a delighted artistic audience.

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Related exhibition
John Olsen Culinaria - The Cuisine of the Sun
The Sydney Morning Herald - Good Weekend
Janet Hawley
10/11/12

John Olsen, our greatest living artist on squeezing the juice from his final years.

 

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Artist Profile
Steve Lopes + Leo Robba
Issue 16

In his eighth decade, artist John Olsen’s legendary lust for life is as obvious as ever and so is his devotion to drawing, a practice that has underpinned his long and distinguished career. What is also evident when talking with Olsen is that his diverse life experiences have informed his approach to art. Memories of tough times during the Depression in the late 1920’s, creative battles of a life spent dedicated to art, and the many wonderful people who have shared his world and great places he has visited are all deeply intertwined through his work. He is still looking outward, projecting what he sees and more importantly celebrating life- just as he did as a young boy growing up in Newcastle, discovering a passion for drawing.

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The Sydney Morning Herald
Louise Schwartzkoff
June 9 2011

At a table laden with paint-crusted crockery, John Olsen slides his brush into a dish if curdling watercolour. The paint is as thick and creamy as the salt deposits on the surface of Lake Eyre. It bleeds at the edges when Olsen strokes his brush across a freshly painted indigo background. “Look there,” he says. “It’s alive. And there’s sort of a running figure, you see? Ill just give it some arms.”

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Sydney Morning Herald- Spectrum
John McDonald
June 4-5th

Top dealers flocking to the influential Hong Kong art fair see it all, from young talent to genuine show- stoppers to the tasteless and over-priced, writes John McDonald.

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Sydney Morning Herald
Matt Buchanan
May 28-29 2011

Earlier this month Sydney lost one of its great arts patrons, Ann Lewis, to cancer. Over the years Lewis enriched the culture, donating remarkable and extraordinarily valuable paintings, photography and sculpture to the Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Australia and others

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Sydney Morning Herald
Wendy Frew
11/04/2011

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The Sydney Morning Herald
Leo Robba
26/01/11

In casting around for a theme for this year’s Australia Day special, we hoped to choose one that would give the artists scope to explore and celebrate what it means to be Australian. The brief was that the work should be a personal response to our country’s diversity, landscape and culture. Each artist has brought a distinct vision of how they understand and picture our national character, reflecting the wide rang of reactions to the idea of Australia Day.

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The Good Weekend, Sydney Morning Herald
Janet Hawley
11/12/10

Lessons learnt from life.

John Olsen

The artist, 82, tells what he knows about… 

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The Australian Finanical Review
Katrina Strickland
26/08/2010

The National Gallery of Australia has bought John Olsen’s Butcher’s Cart Deia de Mallorca. Painted by the 82-year-old artist in the past year, it depicts a meat cart he used to walk past while living in Spain in the 1950’s.

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Sydney Morning Herald
Linda Morris
24/6/2010

John Olsen, the elder statesmen of Australian art, is preparing to go toe-to-toe with the federal government over proposed changes to superannuation policy, which he says threaten Australia’s status as a creative nation, the livelihood of emerging artists and the viability of the art market.

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Sydney Morning Herald
March 2010

Having a famous surname has been a great motivator for a woman called dove, writes Keilie Hush... Making a splash, John Olsen and Paloma Picasso meet for the first time at the Tim Olsen gallery in Woollahra.

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Sydney Morning Herald
Tracey Clement.
March 12, 2010

John Olsen uses paint in his culinary masterpieces, writes Tracey Clement. Judging by the bulging band of celebrity chefs cooking up a storm on the telly, Australia has become a nation of foodies. But long before the popularity of MasterChef, Jamie Oliver and the luscious Nigella, iconic Australian painter John Olsen was getting busy in the kitchen.

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Sydney Morning Herald
Helen Pitt
March 2010

For the passionate and creative John Olsen, food is art and, in
his latest exhibition and book, art is food, writes Helen Pitt. En route to the Spanish island of Majorca, artist John Olsen had an epiphany in Barcelona's La Boqueria market. The year was 1957 but, growing up in 1930s Australia, he thought green beans were meant to be khaki-coloured and peas were grey and mushy. Born in Newcastle in 1928, where his father ran a clothing shop in Hunter Street, he says his mother as a cook was typical of her time: everything was over-boiled.

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Australian Financial Review
Katrina Strickland
March 2010

The man who is arguably Australia's greatest living artist has combined his love of food and art - and family - in an exhibition with a twist, writes Katrina Strickland. John Olsen and Stephen Ormandy were discussing openings. The 82-yearald Olsen has had dozens, including one for his latest show, Culinaria: The Cuisine of the Sun, which opened at Tim Olsen's Sydney gallery last night. Olsen's son-in-law, Ormandy, had his second only last month

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Belle
Tanya Buchanan Photos Jeremy Simons
April/May 2010

A lifelong love of cooking is the inspiration behind John Olsen's latest exhibition It's not often that you get the chance to have Australia's greatest living painter advise you on the finer points of cooking - in particular. how to make a paella - but that's exactly what happened when I spoke with Dr John Olsen A0 about hisnew exhibition, Culinaria. The show, which opened at son Tim Olsen's Woollahra gallery on March 2, is a series of works celebrating John's well-known passion for food that began when he lived and worked in Majorca in the 1950s.

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The Weekend Australian Financial Review
Andrew Clark
June 28-29, 2008

Children can struggle to find their identities growing up in the shadow of a celebrated parent.

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Sydney Morning Herald: Arts and Entertainment
Steve Meacham
June 3, 2008

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