Self Portrait: (2004)

Roy Churcher: 1933 -2014.

Roy Churcher is an Australian postwar and contemporary painter who was born in England but lived in and loved Australia from the 1950s. He worked in Brisbane, Melbourne, and Fremantle. In the 1990s, Roy and his wife, Betty Churcher, a former director of the National Gallery of Australia, built their final family home and vineyard at Wamboin outside of Canberra.

Roy was a prolific artist who reacted to his environment and the landscapes that were important to him at the time. During his long career his painting style evolved and changed. But one thing was constant: Roy’s love of colour and the impact this has on one’s emotions. Roy’s works profiled by Grumpy Betty come from the height of his Wamboin period where his love of colour has subsumed everything – form included. Hidden in these paintings is a vase of flowers, a bird, or the colour of the sun in a tree, but all that is subordinate to the joy of the colours themselves that Roy was experiencing.

Roy’s works are held by the National Gallery of Victoria and the Queensland Art Gallery, and he has exhibited at many galleries around Australia from the mid-1950s. These paintings were part of a successful 2005 exhibition at the Ray Hughes Gallery, Sydney. Grumpy Betty is proud to profile this painting series from this much-loved artist at the height of his productive life.