Graeme Drendel’s paintings capture isolated individuals in vast, stark landscapes, often inspired by the Mallee region in Victoria, where the artist grew up. In contrast, this portrait of friend and fellow artist, Dr Jill Orr (b. 1952), is small and intimate. Painted in one sitting in Drendel’s Melbourne studio, he stood just a metre or so away from Orr as he captured the bristling texture of her auburn hair and deeply etched features, working quickly and confidently in deftly applied oil paint.
Orr is a contemporary artist whose performance-based works and installations interrogate social and political issues, environmental concerns, gender and the relationship between identity and place. Trained as an art teacher, she began exhibiting at the Ewing and George Paton Gallery at Melbourne University in the late 1970s. Since then, her work has been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Australia and overseas.
Gift of the artist 2023
© Graeme Drendel/Copyright Agency 2024
Graeme Drendel (1 portrait)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Close encounters are the genesis for Graeme Drendel’s enticing portraiture.
Open every day
Drawn from the National Portrait Gallery collection, this salon-style hang references the lavish 18th- and 19th-century European salons where paintings were hung floor-to-ceiling.
