Fruits of a Splendid Isolation

In an eddy, a side-pool off the mainstream, a light shone on a quartet of friends who drew, painted and created, individually and as a group, over a period of fifty years.

They grew with an East Coast flavour, untethered to any school or style, that leaned towards the dynamic, figurative and expressive, revelling in originality and the thrust and parry of the group dynamic.

From high school art students, to a group of painters creating works that drew praise from themselves, each other, whomever. They operated from the high-horse of driven, perhaps arrogant, young men prepared to criticize but also to put their work on a wall, to test ideas of what art should or could be.

This is a fleeting examination of the evolution of a group of artists;, John Walsh, Daryl File, Richard Rogers and Kent Baddeley, who last exhibited together in 1985 in an exhibition called ‘Big heads, Small Room.’