Artwork Information

Born in 1925 in Ingham, Queensland, Coburn grew up in a world devoid of modern art. On a trip to Sydney at the age of 13, he was taken to the Art Gallery of NSW, where he fell in love with a painting by Arthur Streeton. From then on, Coburn was determined to become an artist.

There were detours along the way - first with the Navy during WWII, after which he returned to Queensland to work in a bank. But that career was short-lived; Coburn announced to his horrified family that he was going to Sydney to study art. He both studied and taught at the National Art School in Sydney and was also appointed the Head of the National Art School from 1972 to 1974.

 

Coburn is celebrated for his distinctive style of abstraction. Depicting the beauty of nature and the spirituality of landscape, Coburn has refined a subtle yet powerful symbolic language in the form of large-scale paintings, tapestries and vivid screenprints. As a Catholic, critic John McDonald said of Coburn's work, "All of his work could be seen as broadly religious, although it is never doctrinaire. Even when the paintings grow darker and more meditative ... they still radiate a kind of inner strength and cohesion."

 

He is perhaps best known for his designs of two large tapestries for the Sydney Opera House curtains, and a series of seven for the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts, Washington.