Brett Whiteley (1939-1992)

'I use collage, or more properly photography, sometimes in a painting when I feel the need to describe in the focus of the painting something that requires infinite realism, a realism so absolute that no amount of painstaking brush strokes can accurately describe it. It requires great skill to blend a photographic image into a lyrical painting so that it doesn't shock the picture plane. My way is neither Pop nor Cubist. The idea came years ago from looking at a van Gogh landscape, where I thought he had used a photograph of part of a tree, though of course colour photography hadn't been invented then.' (Brett Whiteley quoted in S. McGrath, Brett Whiteley, Sydney, 1979, p.219)

This work will be included in the forthcoming Brett Whiteley catalogue raisonné being compiled by Kathie Sutherland.