SELBY WARREN
1887–1979
Trunkey Creek, NSW, Australia
Warren was an Australian bushman who spent his life in the small settlement of Trunkey Creek and began making visual records of his life experiences in 1963 on found materials using brushes he made with his own hair. that are elemental and soul-stirring. Memory paintings are anchored in rural scenes of his life shearing, as a stockman, itinerant laboring, and in expressions of rural folklore; poems and ballads he liked to recall; iconic Australian landmarks and political figures, fusing his paintings with elaborate frames that are constructions.
Discovered when he was 85 years old when a painting was seen hung at local pub the Black Stump, Warren drew a great deal of attention over a period of three years after his first exhibition at the age of 85 at Rudy Komon's legendary gallery in Sydney in 1972 – followed by exhibitions in Melbourne and Brisbane which led to much critical and media acclaim. As Komon remarked Warren was "one of Australia's greatest art finds"... "one of a half a dozen like him in the world."
"I've lived in the bush all me life. I've seen things that don't happen in Australia any more...So when I took up painting I was able to put it all down."
-Selby Warren, in Lenore Nicklin, 'Bush painter waltzes in', Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February, 1972
