Australian artist Ken Done unpacks a life of travels — and why he often returns to Giverny
As one of Australia’s most recognisable artists, Ken Done, 85, swapped a career in advertising to become a full-time painter at 40.
He turned classic Australian iconography into bright abstract expressionism — painting the Great Barrier Reef, native animals and Sydney Harbour in what was a meteoric rise in the ‘80s (even collaborating with Olivia Newton-John on her brand Koala Blue at the time).
Done’s innovative pace didn’t stop with art, moving into fashion and homewares with a series of doona covers hitting cult status, so too slogan T-shirts and handbags featuring koalas.
Still, it was a trip to Claude Monet’s House and Garden in Giverny — where the French impressionist lived for more than 43 years — that most impacted Ken Done as a painter.
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“I first visited Monet’s Garden in the 1980s with my wife Judy,” he says. “As an artist, I was naturally familiar with his work and had studied his paintings, but until you’ve seen it in context, nothing matches the thrill of actually being in the garden itself. That was a mind-blowing moment in my life.
“Seeing the bridge, the water lilies, the house with all of the yellow Japanese images and paintings within it, well it was a great experience that stayed with me for a long time.
“I’ve been back a couple of times since, but it was the first visit that really had a profound effect on me as an artist. Nothing really prepares you for seeing it in the flesh. I remember the feeling of being in Monet’s Garden, observing the light, the little bridge we are familiar with in his paintings. I would definitely go back again.
“The house itself is not a large one. The striking blue of the irises and the water lilies is such wonderful contrast to the abundance of yellow too.
“The trip to Monet’s Garden was an important time in my own career as I had my very first exhibition on my 40th birthday on the 29th June, 1980 at Holdsworth Gallery in Sydney. It was the most commercial gallery in Sydney at that time, and a couple of months after that, I opened my own gallery, which I always wanted to do.
“Colours are like notes of music, and Monet loved his colours. Yellow is a very important colour to me too, and it was for Monet who used it in his haystack series and water lilies. I’ve loved it ever since I bought a little Van Gogh book when I was about 10 or 12 years old.
“Yellow is a wonderful colour, slightly on the edge of madness where most artists are. The key is how you put it with other colours. If you put pink with it or blue with it, it’s just like arranging notes on a piano. But in the end, it’s how artists bring it to their work that reflects how they feel about it.
“In 1975, I went on a holiday with my wife to Vanuatu. It’s there I met racing car driver Peter Brock . . . He was talking to me about racing car driving and how passionate he was about it. I realised I was very good at advertising, but I wasn’t passionate about it. I wanted to be a painter.
“I flew back to Sydney late on the Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning I went into the chairman of the advertising agency that I worked for and resigned. I was 35 and knew if you wanted to be a painter, you had to give it everything. Over the next five years I did various bits of freelance work because I needed the money, but the 1980s changed everything for me. Travelling allowed me to see things differently.
“I also remember being in Paris for our honeymoon and arriving in the city late at night with Judy and checking into our hotel in the St Germain area.
“It was a lovely old hotel. I woke up in the morning keen to look out the window to see the trees in the square, but instead, directly in front of me, was a man cleaning his teeth. Our room faced the air shaft in the middle of the building; and even though we’ve been back to that hotel since, nothing could ever take away the experience of your first married morning.
“Judy and I are still together, still happy in each other’s company, and can go through an entire morning with hardly even saying a word to one another. We still get along and would go back to France.”
Done’s latest exhibition, No Rules, is showing at HOTA Gallery, Gold Coast, until Feb 15; hota.com.au
