Nolan On Nolan: Sydney Nolan In His Own Words

Sidney Nolan (1917-1993) remains one of Australia's best loved artists, not least for his iconic Ned Kelly series. He was as interested in literature as he was in painting, was very widely read, and very much influenced by what he read. In this unique volume, the artist becomes his own subject.

'Nolan On Nolan' extracts his notebooks, letters, interviews and poetry, and these take us on the intellectual and emotional journeys which carried him around the world and which kept his art, and often his life, outside the comfort zone. The material from Nolan's notebooks is published here for the first time, part of a collection that reveals a complex personality and an artist who resists stylistic categorisation. It is Nolan's thought patterns and obsessions which are this book's subject, rather than a survey of his painting, although the former throw a fascinating new light on the latter.