Painter, entered the NGV Art School as an ex-soldier (former Sergeant) after WWII; 42 of the 59 new students in 1946 were ex-servicemen. In 1947 he entered Second Class 1947, oil on canvas (Warrnambool Art Gallery), for the Travelling Art Scholarship – a realistic painting that included portraits of friends and fellow students (John Brack, Grahame King – with whom he shared a studio – Helen Maudsley and Fred Williams). George Bell gave advice on the composition. He won the scholarship although many considered the painting shockingly moderne in its rounded modelling and everyday subject matter. He went to England, where he found accommodation at The Abbey Art Centre in New Barnet, Hertfordshire, where various Australian artists lived, including Mary Webb , James Gleeson, Robert Klippel, Noel Counihan, Bernard Smith, Leonard French and Stacha Halpern (see Bernard Smith reminiscences, vol.2), while others visited, e.g. Albert Tucker, Michael Shannon and Alan McCulloch.

Green returned to Melbourne in the early 1950s and struggled to survive, first as a graphic designer then as an art teacher. He kept painting and exhibited in a few, ever decreasing modest shows. After a 30-year wait, he finally emerged in the 1980s showing pencil, ink and gouache close-up environmental drawings of foliage and natural debris on the bush floor at Pinacotheca gallery – the results of long study of oriental art, especially shanshui drawings of the Sung Dynasty. Subsequently showed 2 painted scrolls (massed clouds over Port Phillip Bay and dawn sky viewed from the bush near Castlemaine, where he lived after he retired). For the last decade of his life he became increasingly reclusive, repeatedly doing coloured drawings of dead mistletoe, which were much admired by the cognoscenti and occasionally included in curated exhibitions.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011