Max Cullen Geoffrey Rush

Max Cullen decided to paint acclaimed Australian actor Geoffrey Rush simply because ‘he was sitting next to me in the dressing room.’ They were performing together in Company B Belvoir’s production of Small poppies earlier this year, both playing five-year-olds.

‘I said he hadn’t been painted for the Archibald and Geoffrey said he didn’t want to be painted for the Archibald,’ recalls Cullen. Asked how he persuaded Rush, he laughs. ‘He doesn’t know! He’s out of the country. He knows I was sketching him but then I sketch everybody.’

Cullen painted the portrait in under three hours using a palette knife. He and Rush have been friends and colleagues for many years.

‘He’s got such an interesting face,’ says Cullen. ‘Those tragic eyes. It’s such a clown’s face that changes so much. When he laughs a light goes on inside him but he’s got those sad, sad eyes. Winning the Oscar (for Shine) brightened him up considerably!’

Cullen is an artist and actor. Coincidentally, he is currently playing a shambolic and none-too-successful portrait painter in the Sydney Theatre Company production of David Williamson’s play The great man. The much-maligned portrait hanging in the play was actually painted by Cullen.

Born in Wellington in 1940, Cullen studied art and sculpture at East Sydney Tech and then at the Julian Ashton Art School. He has exhibited since 1961 in various solo and group exhibitions including last year’s Sulman Prize. He was the subject of a portrait by his cousin Adam Cullen that was hung in last year’s Archibald Prize.