William Robinson (painter)
William Robinson AO is an Australian painter and lithographer.
Robinson studied art at Ballarat High School from 1955 to 1956. After graduating, he began working as an art instructor, eventually becoming head of the Painting Department at the Brisbane College of Advanced Education in 1982. In 1989 he retired to work full-time on his paintings.
Robinson held his first exhibition in 1967. He rose to international prominence as a part of the exhibitions Australian Perspecta in 1983 and The Sixth Bienniale of Sydney in 1986.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has several of his works in their collection, as does the National Gallery of Australia and several smaller Australian galleries.
He has won the Archibald Prize for portraiture twice: first in 1987 for Equestrian self portrait, then in 1995 for Self-portrait with stunned mullet. He has also won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting in 1990 and 1996.
Robinson released a solo exhibition, Landscapes, which consisted of oil paintings which showed fragments of the Australian bush in various perspectives.
In 2009 Robinson was the subject of a documentary by filmmaker Catherine Hunter. "William Robinson: A Painter’s Journey" traces the places that have inspired the artist, from his early farmyard paintings to the majestic Creation Landscape series and most recently, the quiet still life paintings drawn from the intimate surrounds of his Brisbane house and garden.
In 2011, The Queensland University of Technology Art Museum curated a major retrospective exhibition William Robinson: The Transfigured Landscape which was opened by the Australian Governor General Quentin Bryce. There is an art gallery within Old Government House on the QUT's Garden Point campus devoted to Robinson's art, featuring many of his artworks, including some of his very first.
