Andrew Sibley

This richly detailed and colourfully illustrated book explores via a series of key themes the work of Melbourne artist Andrew Sibley. A self-confessed obsessive with demonic energy his many portraits entered the Archibald Prize and the more recent landscape paintings are also treated in sections in the book.

Looks at the Australian artist Andrew Sibley who can create an entire imaginative world in a single painting. this leads to enormous diversity in his work.

An account of the life and work of Australian painter Andrew Sibley.

On the southern portion of what was known as the Sibley’s Pezuna del Caballo (Horse’s Hoof) Ranch in West Texas’ Culberson County are two mountains that nearly meet, forming a gap that frames a salt flat where Indians and later, pioneers came to gather salt to preserve foodstuffs. According to the US Geological Survey, the gap that provides this breathtaking and historic view is named “Jane’s Window.” In Jane’s Window: My Spirited Life in West Texas and Austin, Jane Dunn Sibley, the inimitable namesake of that mountain gap, gives readers a similarly enchanting view: she tells the story of a small-town West Texas girl coming into her own in Texas’ capital city, where her commitment to philanthropy and the arts and her flair for fashion—epitomized by her signature buzzard feather—have made her name a society staple. Growing up during the Depression in Fort Stockton, Jane Sibley learned first-hand the value of hard work and determination. In what she describes as “a more innocent age,” she experienced the “pleasant life” of a rural community with good schools, friends and neighbors, and daily dips in the Comanche Springs swimming pool. She arrived as a student at the University of Texas only ninety days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and studied art under such luminaries as sculptor Charles Umlauf. Her enchanting stories of returning to Fort Stockton, working in the oil industry, marrying local doctor D. J. Sibley, and rearing a family evoke both her love for her origins and her clear-eyed aspirations. The Sibleys never discussed the details of their good fortune, and, to their gratitude, no one ever asked. In Jane’s Window, Sibley narrates travel adventures, shares vignettes of famous visitors, and tells of her favorite causes, among which the Austin Symphony and the preservation of lower Pecos prehistoric rock art are especially prominent. Peopled with vivid characters and told in Sibley’s uniquely down-to-earth and humorous manner, Jane’s Window paints a portrait of a life filled to the brim with events both heartwarming and heartbreaking.

In 2004 Australian artist Peter Bonner embarked on a period of intense drawing. He drew in New York, the American Southwest and the Australian desert and he drew constantly. Something altered. A day in the life of the desert held lessons in how to see; memories from his early past came into the picture. In Bonner’s words: “It’s hard to speak just the right amount of the truth of what happened and just the right amount of the magnetic, so that people really want to hear about it— and it’s hard to find a way to do it quickly so the moment isn’t lost—” In the Australian winter of 2018, an exhibition of Bonner’s drawings took place at the School of Clay and Art (SoCA) in Melbourne. It provided the occasion for an extraordinary conversation about drawing among a group of Melbourne artists. With the feeling of shared, unfolding experience, A Pilgrim’s Progress documents both exhibition and conversation.