We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which the Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art stands and recognise the creative contribution First Australians make to the art and culture of this country.
David Strachan / Australia 1919–70 / Still life flowers and oranges 1967 / Oil on composition board / 52 x 64.5cm / Gift of Julie O’Duffy in memory of Dr John and Mrs Rita O’Duffy through the Queensland Art Gallery Foundation 2012. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program / Collection: Queensland Art Gallery | Gallery of Modern Art / © David Strachan
David StrachanStill life flowers and oranges 1967
Not Currently on Display
In the Australian Dictionary of Biography curator Barry Pearce writes that Strachan’s ‘growing interest in classicism blended with a fascination for the dream-state . . . [and he painted] still-lifes of haunting beauty. His flowers, bowls of fruit, birds, and angelic figures glimmered out of the darkness as things not of this world, evoked faintly, like mythological personages in a gently spoken narrative’.1
Endnotes:
1. Barry Pearce, ‘Strachan, David Edgar (1919–1970)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, <http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/strachan-david-edgar-11786>, viewed May 2019.
Painter and printmaker David Strachan was born in the English cathedral city of Salisbury, but the family migrated to Australia when he was a year old.
By the time he was 16, Strachan knew he wanted to be an artist, and he accompanied his mother to Europe in 1936 where he spent the next two years studying in London, Paris and Cassis. During the 1950s, he travelled through Europe with Margaret Olley and lived in London for a period in 1955–57.