Sidney Nolan Quotes on Art

Sidney Nolan is a famous Australian painter and artist. He is best known for his paintings of the infamous outlaw and bushranger Ned Kelly with his stylized steel armor helmet. Famous Sidney Nolan works include “Ned Kelly”, “The Trial”, “Death of Constable Scanlon”, “Pretty Polly Mine”, “First-class Marksman”, “The Defence of Aaron Sherritt”, and “Policeman in Wombat Hole”.

Mini biography: Born Sidney Robert Nolan on the 22nd of April, 1917 in Carlton, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. His mother was Dora and his father Sidney Nolan was a tram driver. Nolan was married to Elizabeth Paterson in 1938 and they divorced in 1945. They had a daughter together: Amelda. He married his second wife Cynthia Reed in 1948 and he adopted her child, Jinx. In 1976 his second wife committed suicide. Nolan married his third wife, Mary Boyd (sister of the famous Australian artist Arthur Boyd) in 1978. The artist died on the 28th of November, 1992 in London, England at the age of 75. He was buried in the Highgate Cemetery, London, England.

List of Famous Sidney Nolan Art Quotes

It’s difficult to describe how one paints, but I think I really cook the images in myself until I’ve got them as clear as I can possibly get them and I then very quickly.. I mean I’m very slow to begin with in thinking it out, but once I get in front of the canvas I’m very quick to get something down. Sidney Nolan

I hope that something takes over for a brief period in the painting to melt all the images together. Because it’s very difficult to do this intellectually and you’re dependent on some rather irrational process at some point in the painting to weld the things together. Sidney Nolan

I’m compelled and dedicated to transmitting emotions and I care for very little else. Sidney Nolan

I was never a communist, and I’d never joined up and I’d never voted – well I’ve never voted in my life – but I was always a believer in the heightened consciousness of the proletariat, well, I feel it still of course. Sidney Nolan

I do lots of drawing but I don’t do drawing for paintings. Sidney Nolan

Really the Kelly paintings are secretly about myself. It’s an inner history of my own emotions. Sidney Nolan

I never became a communist but I always believed in that the freedom in society would have to come from bottom up, rather than from the top down. Sidney Nolan

It’s difficult to put into words, but I think what painters try to get at, or what I try to get at anyway, is that a painting is an extension of yourself. Sidney Nolan

Painting is an extension of man’s means of communication. As such, it’s pure, difficult, and wonderful. Sidney Nolan

I didn’t think it was wrong to go to the wars, and lots of my friends went to the wars. I had no protest against the war on the grounds of being a conscientious objector or anything like that, but I just wasn’t interested whether the Japanese came or whether they didn’t come; so if they didn’t come now they’d come in fifty years time. From my point of view, personally, I just wasn’t interested and I’m still not. Sidney Nolan

I like to work against the clock, so to speak, wait for the bell lap and then race. Sidney Nolan

Sidney Nolan Self Portrait Painting

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Related or similar artists and celebrities include: Ken Done, Brett Whiteley and Henri Matisse.