Tim Storrier Moon boy (self-portrait as a young man)

Tim Storrier has been a force in Australian contemporary art since winning the Sulman Prize in 1968 at age 19, the youngest artist ever to receive the prestigious award. In 1994, he was awarded an Order of Australia (AM) for services to art.

He is renowned for mysterious, poignant landscapes that capture the melancholy vastness of the Australian outback. His famous blaze lines and fire paintings, which began to evolve in the 1980s, explore the stark, arid beauty of the country with its limitless, nocturnal starry sky and endless horizon, and are now instantly recognisable.

Storrier’s work has often revealed a certain nostalgia. ‘Nostalgia’ – as he points out in relation to this work – ‘comes from Greek: nostos meaning “return home” and algos meaning “pain”.’

Storrier offers the following poetic artist’s statement about his self-portrait:

On a nostalgic whim using memories of old lost clothes
I painted them hanging on a structure to resemble a figure
Arranged in ways to suggest the posture, stance and attitude
Informed by the emotions and moods of a youthful self long ago,
Passed
Such method can bring life to the memory of people long gone …
scarecrows of nostalgia …