Patrick White, Painter Manque - Tapa dura

"I always see most of what I write, and am, in fact, a painter manque. All those Goyas - I feel I want to eat them, and bury my face in them, and sniff them up... Patrick White

'I always see most of what I write, and am, in fact, a painter manqu . All those Goyas I feel I want to eat them, and bury my face in them, and sniff them up!' Patrick White It is a little-known fact that a vital source of inspiration for Patrick White was the art of painting. A writer whose creative imagination was intensely visual and sensual, White considered the medium of paint to be a more direct, whole means of expression than words. Much of his writing attempts to recreate and investigate effects attainable through paint, and in many of his characters White explores the painter's psyche. It was Roy de Maistre who first opened White's eyes to the power of painting. His work showed White how to represent the complexities of human relationship and consciousness how, as White put it, to 'weave about freely on different levels at one and the same time': I feel he taught me to write by teaching me to look at paintings and get beneath the surface ...I always feel I began to write from the inside out when Roy de Maistre introduced me to abstract painting about 1936. Before that I had only approached writing as an exercise in naturalism. White was a great lover and collector of paintings and had many close friendships with painters. As well as de Maistre, painters whose company White sought included William Dobell, Tom Gleghorn, Stanislaus Rapotec, Lawrie Daws, Sidney Nolan and Brett Whiteley. Earlier painters whose work inspired him included Walter Sickert, Paul Klee, Vincent van Gogh, William Blake and Eug ne Delacroix. Throughout his life, White generously donated hundreds of works from his substantial and important collection to the Art Gallery of New South Wales. This brilliantly original and revealing book is the first study of this potent source in White's life. It traces the influence of twentieth-century Australian artists, and of European modernist and romantic artists, in his life and work.