V A L E  J O H N   O L S E N  

V A L E  J O H N   O L S E N
A tribute by Victor Rubin

Fox Galleries honours the passing of John Olsen with a heartfelt tribute by his former pupil and close friend Victor Rubin.

John Olsen AO OBE (1928 – 2023) harnessed a creative articulation that was unique, vital and poetic. His recollections of the Australian landscape, paintings, sculptures and works on paper will live on into the future, with a disarticulation in an awareness to that which is in the past.

As John McDonald says ‘Hearing that John Olsen is no more is like learning that Uluru has disappeared overnight’. He was the one of the few winners of all the prestigious Art Gallery of NSW prizes of the last 100 years: the Wynne (1969, 1985), the Sulman (1989) and the Archibald (2005). His works are held in every prominent public and private collection in Australia.

Spanning a successful career course of over 60 years, he generously mentored and advocated for creative community – founding the John Olsen’s atelier, The Bakery Art School, in Sydney’s Paddington in 1967. This is where Victor Rubin met John Olsen. Over the following years, they cultivated a professional and personal relationship, obtained by their great labour; contemporaneity in the great responsibilities of paint.
It is our honour to farewell the passing of the great John Olsen with a heartfelt tribute by Victor Rubin.

For John Olsen – A Grateful Engagement
A Statement by Victor Rubin

In 1967, as a 16-year-old, I walked down Paddington Street with my school briefcase full of my drawings books and a folder of paintings under my arm towards Olsen’s Bakery Art School. The scene was set with the older students and we had to wait for Olsen’s arrival. A dog called Van Dyke was in the courtyard, the atmosphere began to hum and vibrate on John’s dynamic entrance wearing a grey cotton suit and a black Sombrero – he’d been at a funeral.

After a while I was ushered into his office downstairs – he eyed some of my work and commented that he ‘thought he could help make it more profound’. I said that I wanted to learn how to apply paint. As he rubbed his broad chin he said ‘It will all happen in time…’ And so a young man agrees to be taken under the wing of a senior ( Olsen was 39 ) in order to learn and emulate – an apprenticeship was born – for which I am thankful and appreciative of.

Olsen’s ability as a teacher was formidable and formative for me – when he spoke before a life class, he would show us works by Egyptians to Masaccio, Matisse, Miller and Moore. He would demonstrate how to find form and justify what lies between the lines – the same for his painting classes – where he opened my eyes to the Yin and Yang, the Romantic and the Classical; the dangers of their extremes, chaos and sterility, the discipline of formal relationships within the picture, the investigative and instinctive aspects of drawing and painting, taking a walk with a line.
The reading of T.S Eliot’s essay ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ was highly recommended along with ‘Zen and the Art of Archery’…
Over the decades he remained my Elder, his generosity, hospitality, spirit and wisdom pervaded our interactions and his surprises remain an intriguing reality. One day I drew a cricket allegory and discovered we both shared a passion for Test cricket. I explained how I loved to draw while I watched it on TV and encouraged him to do likewise. The next time he called me, he asked if I would like to swap cricketing drawings with him, which we did.

I have many, many memories of the man called John Olsen. His work remains inspirational; Entrance to the Siren City of the Rat Race’, out of the You Beaut Country; the kitchen and the Harbour, the Caravan, the Sun, the play, the lust for life, all those hundreds and thousands, the million marks that are laid down by a painter’s progress in the territory of the soul, heart and brain of the picture’s body. Canvas edges its boundaries bide by time inclusive inside the mind’s eye’s delight in life’s exposure. The gift of the offering are these material insights and pleasures for the eyes to feast upon, and remain although the guided hand no longer moves.

Victor Rubin
Castlemaine 2023

Work Featured; Victor Rubin, John Olsen – A diptych – part I seated, 2010, Acrylic on linen, 199 cm by 168 cm Archibald Prize finalist, Art Gallery of NSW 2010