Bryan Westwood decided to become a professional artist in his mid-thirties, encouraged by his friendships with Justin O'Brien and Jeffrey Smart, with whom he’d had some lessons. He became an Archibald Prize finalist for the first time in 1966 and held his first solo exhibition in 1969 at Bonython Gallery in Sydney. Westwood produced landscapes, interiors, figurative studies and still lifes as well as numerous portraits executed in a highly realistic but painterly style. Many of his sitters were art world friends and associates such as painter Tim Storrier (b. 1949), who met Westwood around 1972. 'In the years that followed, we became friends,' Storrier wrote, 'firmly based in the struggle to create paintings of some quality … We were open to each other about our frustrations and inabilities, and sometimes they were similar, although our responses were very different.' Westwood was awarded the first of his two Archibald Prizes in 1989 for his painting of artist and critic Elwyn Lynn. He won the Archibald again in 1991–92 with his portrait of Paul Keating, who had successfully challenged Bob Hawke for the prime ministership not long before the prize was announced.
Purchased 2012
© Bryan Westwood/Copyright Agency, 2024
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
As Bryan Westwood’s portrait of Brian Dunlop hangs adjacent to Brian Dunlop’s portrait of the philanthropist Dr Joseph Brown AO OBE, we see the artist of one work as the subject of the other.
It takes a village to raise a creative! Get an insight into the often-unseen work and supporters needed for the arts to thrive. The work of art documents the creative process, evoke states of creativity and inspiration, and shows us clues about the subject’s own work from the way artists portray them.
