Show of wonders

One of the art books purchased in recent months that I’ve most enjoyed has been Arthur Boyd: Etchings and Lithographs, published in 1971. Boyd was an Australian painter, potter and printmaker, born in 1920 in Melbourne, who came to England in 1959 and made his home in this country. A deeply interesting image-maker, he came from a dynasty of artists, was largely self-taught, and evolved a powerful style that owed much to surrealism and expressionism, but was entirely his own vision. Boyd created a beguiling world of mythical beasts and figures, many of them involved in events of unusually potent religious or sexual drama.

At one point we saw a lot of his work in this country, and it was a great enlivening force. The art critic Peter Fuller was a consistent supporter of Boyd, but since the deaths of both men (in 1990 and 1999 respectively) there has been an absence of Boyd on the exhibition circuit.