‘Windy Day’ – Ken Searle – bid is at $100

Ken Searle’s life has been devoted to painting the area where he had always lived — its industrial zones and suburban housing, and the waterways that link the land and its people.

Whether doing a large oil painting or an illustration for a picture book, Ken begins by exploring the area and sketching on site.

‘My aim is to portray place, and the people who are part of that place,’ Ken said. ‘My method is to walk into a painting, letting the area itself shape the form and content of my portrayal. As I explore, I sketch on site — selecting material, editing, and composing as I look at things. Sometimes the on-site sketch will be the finished artwork, but often I return to the work later in the studio, and recompose the elements.’

Ken has been a full-time artist since his early twenties.

‘In 1976 I began exhibiting at Watters Gallery, East Sydney, where I held 18 solo exhibitions before the gallery closed a couple of years ago,’ He said.

Ken has works in the National Gallery of Australia, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the National Gallery of Victoria, and the Art Gallery of New South Wales as well as regional galleries and private collections.

‘I first worked as a book illustrator in 1993, when I produced the cover and twenty black and white line drawings for the novel Lucy in the Leap Year, by Nadia Wheatley, an Honour Book in the 1994 CBCA Awards,’ he said.

Over the period 1998-2001 Ken and his partner Nadia, worked as consultants at the school at Papunya, an Indigenous community 250 kilometres west of Alice Springs.

He said, ‘Every term for four years we spent three or four weeks in the community, helping Anangu staff and students develop a variety of Indigenous curriculum resources for all stages of learning from pre-school children to the initiated young men in the upper secondary area of the school.’ 

One of the resources was The Papunya School Book of Country and History, later published commercially by Allen and Unwin (2001).

Ken was the designer for this book, as well as facilitating the illustrations done by over forty Anangu staff and students, and doing some of the illustrations himself. The  Papunya School Book of Country and History  won a number of awards, including the Eve Pownall Award in the CBCA Awards 2002 and the History for Young People section of the NSW Premier’s History Awards for 2002.

‘Nadia and I subsequently collaborated on Going Bush (Allen & Unwin, 2007), produced in collaboration with sixteen primary school children,’ he said.

Going Bush won the Wilderness Society Picture Book Award 2008 and was shortlisted for the Human Rights Award. Nadia and Ken also worked together on Playground (Allen & Unwin 2011, Winner, Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing, 2012) and Australians All (Allen & Unwin 2013, NSW Premier’s History Award). 

‘I mentored Indigenous artists Mary Malbunka (Pintupi, from Papunya) and Alfred Lalara and Alice Durillo (Warnindilyakwa, from Groote Eylandt) in the process of illustrating their bilingual picture books, which I designed for Allen and Unwin,’ Ken said. 

‘As well as my career as an illustrator and book designer, I do large paintings in oil on canvas, depicting the suburban and industrial areas of a number of Australian cities. ‘

‘Currently I am working, as I have been working all my life, on portraying the ngurra, the country, including the waterways, around Gamay (Botany Bay). 

‘As for my connection with kites – When I was growing up, every year, when the August winds started, I used to make kites and fly them from the playground of the school at the top of the street,’ Ken said.

‘I put a kite on the cover of Nadia’s book, Lucy in the Leap Year and a few years ago I did a drawing with a kite in it.   

‘My own hopes circle around peace with justice for the world, especially for the people of Palestine and for First Nations Australians.’

by Adelaide Stolba