David Rankin - Lily Brett

Lily Brett

In 1979 his first wife died leaving him with a young child. In the same year he subsequently met his second and current wife Lily Brett, whose own life was etched by tragedy with her parent survivors of the Holocaust. She too migrated to Australia as a child after the Second World War in 1948. The artist recounts that his empathy for Lily and the pity for his first wife’s death fused into what he calls “the dark blessing of my life.” The darkness was transformed into images. The author Dore Ashton writes that the events of 1979 and the fire which ravished his studio in 1997 and burnt his art works and many personal possessions, had a profound impact on his work. From 1997 he became more interested in mortality and the works after the fire were called ‘existentialist.’

Having personal life experiences as his subject matter, Rankin's paintings contemplate these things. For example, his Jerusalem series followed a trip to Jerusalem in 1988, which then led to his Golgotha works. His travels to the Australian, American and Mexican deserts became the subject matter for many of his canvases, such as Ridge – Mungo, Golden Prophecy – San Antonio, Grey Sonora Landscape and then led to his Witness Series. From the fire in his studio he then painted Buddha and Flames. He illustrated two books by Lily Brett on the holocaust and explored the theme further in his huge work The Drowned and The Saved from a book by Primo Levi of the same name. Through Brett he encountered Jewish mythology and painted Black Menorah and Black Tfiln and as a testament to his love for her created his Husband and Wife Series including Husband and Wife Triptych III, and Husband and Wife – Ying and Yang.

In the past 30 years Rankin has held over 100 one-person exhibitions in cities as diverse as Paris, Beijing, New York and throughout Australia. He is represented in many of the world's leading collections and museums. He was selected as Australia's official representative in the UNESCO Fortieth Anniversary Exhibition celebrations that toured the world's capitals. He was featured in the Salon de Mai in Paris and the Chicago Art Fair. Among the many prizes and awards he has been honored with is the 1983 Wynne Prize, Australia's premier landscape prize. Recently an English-German monograph on his work titled "The Walls of the Heart: The Work and Life of David Rankin" was published by US critic and art historian Dore Ashton. In 2005-2006 a major exhibition of Rankin’s art, curated by Dore Ashton, toured through public galleries in Australia.