Quentin Sprague

A richly illustrated study of Australian modernist painter Ken Whisson's life and work. Ken Whisson (1927-2022) was one of Australia's foremost artists, widely acclaimed for an unwaveringly idiosyncratic practice that charted a singular course through seven decades of modern and contemporary Australian painting. Celebrated in his lifetime with the 2012 retrospective exhibition, Ken Whisson – As If, at the Museum...

A luminous collection of essays on art, obsession and creativity from one of Australia’s best critics. Why do we revere the figure of the artist? Is the drive to create an innate human instinct or a form of compulsion? Is the provocateur more lauded than the realist? Why do artists do what they do, day after day, in a display...