Life
O'Connor graduated in law from University of Melbourne and served with the Army during the Second World War. After discharge he studied art at the George Bell School, Melbourne for a time but was mostly self-taught as an artist.
He was vice-president of the Contemporary Art Society of Victoria and studied and painted extensively in UK and Europe 1973 - 1947.
His obituary in The Age read in part:
"O'Connor was born in Preston to Ada (née Clear) and Bertie, the fourth of his parents' five children. After his father became very ill, his mother started a small slipper factory behind the house to support the family.
She also painted pictures at night to sell. He worked after school with his parents selling slippers from a stall at the Queen Victoria Market, and images of the market and the inner suburbs impressed themselves upon him.
His mother lost the factory during the Depression, and O'Connor moved with his parents to a shack in Mount Evelyn, where they grew vegetables and kept a cow.
He attended school in Lilydale.
He started to draw, paint and create wood cuts at Mount Evelyn, as well as reading widely. Later, he completed his schooling at Melbourne High School.
O'Connor then worked for his brother, a solicitor, and studied law at Melbourne University; art was restricted to late evenings and weekends....
In the Contemporary Art Society exhibition of 1941 he shared first prize with Donald Friend.
At this time he met Noel Counihan and Yosl Bergner and they become close friends. Through the former he became friends with Judah Waten, Alan Marshall and other writers and artists who frequented the Swanston Family Hotel.
He also joined the Communist Party and became close to Melbourne's Jewish community.
In late 1941, aged 23, O'Connor completed his law degree and went into the army. In January 1942, he married Ailsa Donaldson, whom he had met at George Bell's art classes. They later had two children.
O'Connor remained active in art and art politics, exhibiting in the 1942 Anti-Fascist Exhibition, writing articles about fascism and art, and challenging the Angry Penguin group.
In 1946, O'Connor, Bergner and Counihan held their first major exhibition, Three Realist Artists, which attracted considerable notice and approval.
Also, in partnership with Waten, he started Dolphin Publications, a venture to publish Australian writing.
While working as a solicitor, O'Connor continued painting and exhibited in one-man shows as well as group shows with other realist artists though the 1950s - the Cold War years when realism was not fashionable in the art world.
In the 1960s, O'Connor and his second wife, artist Vera Stanley, moved to Sydney, where they lived for about 20 years. He became a full-time artist, with frequent exhibitions of his work, including at the Australian Galleries and the Victorian Artists Society.
In a 1972 review, Patrick McCaughey decried "the neglect of so distinguished an artist as Vic O'Connor", and noted his feeling for people and places is absorbed into an art where the pith of observation resists sentiment without passing up sympathy. In 1973 and '74, O'Connor, Vera and their daughter Sue lived in Polperro, Cornwall, and in Scotland and then travelled in Europe.
In 1983, he and Vera bought "Woodside" in Dromana, his home for the next 27 years. O'Connor, then aged 64, continued painting prolifically. In the late 1980s he rented a studio in Greeves Street, Fitzroy, and again painted Melbourne's inner suburbs. In 1990 he had his first of many exhibitions at Bridget McDonnell's Gallery.
O'Connor wrote in 1983: "Immediate surroundings and the problems and injustices of society have continued to provide the main source of my paintings. Paintings of vagrants, the fate of the elderly, recurring anti-war themes, subjects drawn from literature comprise the bulk of my output. Within this framework I have remained a realistic painter of mood and place, partly outside the mainstream of Australian art."
His many interests ranged from literature to archaeology to racehorses. As well, he was an engaging raconteur with sharp and humorous observations on the foibles of humanity."
His second wife died in 2004. Towards the end of his life he was unable to paint due to arthritis and failing eyesight
Read more about this topic: Victor O'Connor
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