 |
Rolf left Australia
aged 22 to study painting in England. The trip was financed by
and large by the four exhibitions of paintings he had held
previously in his home town of Perth.
He enrolled at the
City & Guilds Art School in London, wanting to follow in his
grandfather’s footsteps and become a portrait painter. That was
his main aspiration in life. However he found himself doing all
sorts of things that didn’t really interest him, such as
etching.
A chance meeting
at Earl’s Court tube station with Australian impressionist
painter ‘Bill’ Hayward Veal changed his life. As a teenager in
Perth, Western Australia, Veal’s work in the local art gallery
had impressed Rolf so much that on a trip to Sydney with the
West Australian swimming team, he had tried, unsuccessfully, to
meet Bill with a view to being taught by him. At the time of
their meeting in London Bill was running an art course, and
though Rolf couldn’t afford it he went along anyway. “In this
class I tried to impress him with thickly daubed oils on canvas
paper, but Bill gave me a real canvas and told me to set up some
bottles and other items that I would like to paint. He gave me a
brush, some burnt sienna, some rag and a bottle of turpentine
and told me to see how little paint I could use. Instead of
painting isolated individual parts he told me to tackle the
whole canvas all the time. I still do this now, starting off
very rough and rugged and then refining later. After the course,
Rolf became Veal’s protégé.
In the mid 50’s
Rolf’s paintings were exhibited in the Summer Exhibition at the
Royal Academy for two consecutive years, and recently he
received an honorary membership from the Royal Society of
British Artists. In December 2000, the Harris family held their
first ever art show together at the Halcyon Gallery in
Birmingham when the works of Rolf – together with the works of
his wife Alwen and their daughter Bindi – formed part of an
eclectic exhibition of paintings, jewellry, sculpture and
etching.
In 2001 Rolf’s BBC
television programme
Rolf on Art attracted over 24.5 million
viewers over a period of four weeks, gaining the highest ratings
ever for a programme on the visual arts in the history of
television. Last year saw a follow up to the hugely successful
series along with the launch of a book, Rolf on Art to accompany
it. An exhibition of Rolf’s signed limited editions toured the
country, whilst in November 2002 Rolf received one of the
greatest honours possible for any artist when the bulk of his
work from the two series of Rolf on Art, was exhibited for a
month at the National Gallery, before transferring to the
Halcyon Gallery in Mayfair.
|
