Raymond Kenyon The architect at home

The subject of Raymond Kenyon’s portrait is Australian architect Glenn Murcutt, renowned internationally for his environmentally sensitive modernist homes. Murcutt is the winner of many architectural prizes including the prestigious Pritzker Prize in 2002.

Kenyon is also an architect. He has painted since childhood mostly for the fun of it and is largely self-taught – “though there’s a bit of painting in architecture,” he says. Since 2000 he has become more serious about painting and has entered work in local exhibitions. When he decided to enter the Archibald and began casting around for a subject, he wrote a letter to Murcutt requesting a sitting, and included a postcard-size painting of Murcutt’s right eye, which he did from a magazine photograph. Some weeks later Murcutt rang to say he would be happy to sit for a portrait.

Kenyon visited the architect in his Mosman home, a 1930s house, the interior of which Murcutt has transformed “as only he can,” says Kenyon. “There is a back window the full height of the wall, which is very deep and made of welded sheet steel. It has big panes of glass on pivots. He showed me how they worked and I thought it would make a good background: the white walls and the dark charcoal grey of the window frame.” Kenyon wanted his colour palette kept muted. “I wanted something quite subtle that has an understated simplicity to it, which a lot of his buildings have.” The black and white background represents the subject’s uncompromising vision for his work.

Born in Melbourne in 1954, Kenyon studied architecture at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. His portrait of Murcutt now hangs at the Australian Institute of Architects, Sydney.