‘He discovered magnificence and color in all places’: celebrating the lifetime of Nicholas Harding | Portray

Nicholas Harding has died.

The most cancers they thought they’d overwhelmed returned to take him the opposite day on the age of 66. We misplaced an excellent man and delightful painter whose work is cherished.

He might paint a stretch of bush or an umbrella within the sand and make you suppose you have been seeing them for the primary time. He did magnificence with absolute bravado. Considered one of his flame timber in full bloom is a stunning sight. However then he painted a patch of railway tracks that takes your breath away.

These tracks are on the prime of his road in Sydney. The individuals who reside round right here do all they’ll to maintain them out of sight till an artist comes alongside to make us look by way of his eyes and see how lovely it’s: the tracks, the fences and within the distance the hulking presence of Central station.

This was Harding’s technique to work years in the past when he was a instructing himself to color. He turned a painter’s eye on the journey. “I used to be discovering a language. I used to be discovering the district and its color. I used to be planting my flag.”

He got here to Australia as a younger child, lived on the sting of the bush in Sydney, deserted college, labored for some time in promoting and skilled as an animator. Footrot Flats and Blinky Invoice are someplace down deep in his resumé.

He was at all times decided to color. He started to win little prizes. A vendor paid him to desert animation. And he met Lynne Watkins, his invincible spouse. That they had a son, Sam.

From the beginning, his work was lovely if somewhat gloomy. He confessed to being cautious of color in these days. “I feared an excessive amount of would flip a portray into fruit salad.” However the solar broke by way of, he stated. “They begin to write their very own songs.”

He at all times got here again to drawing. In big ink on paper works he put his stamp on the seashores of the far north coast of New South Wales. He grew to become the grasp of the pandanus, discovering limitless magnificence in these shabby timber. Caravan parks grew to become pure Nicholas Harding.

He at all times celebrated magnificence. He gained this 12 months’s Wynne prize on the Art Gallery of New South Wales with Eora, a stunning four-metre panorama of the bush. Among the many entries for the Archibald prize hanging within the rooms subsequent door there was, after all, a portrait by Nicholas Harding.

His faces have been hung within the Archibald practically yearly. He had a gradual eye for character. He gained in 2001 with a haunting portrait of the actor John Bell. Like a lot of his work, the wonder and thriller in these faces over time got here with a hint of menace.

Remedy failed him. He fought a gallant battle. His work survives him. So does his means of his nation – askance, at occasions, however discovering magnificence and color in all places.