Kevin Connor Self-portrait

Kevin Connor was born in Sydney in 1932, studied at East Sydney Technical College in 1948-49, worked in Europe, Egypt and the USA, and travelled extensively from the 1960s to the 1980s. Connor was granted with the Harkness Fellowship in 1966. He exhibited at the Art Gallery of NSW in 1989, travelling to Melbourne, Hobart and Broken Hill. Connor has had 50 exclusive exhibitons and is represented in major public and corporate collections in Australia.

Connor was trustee of the Art Gallery of NSW from the years 1981 to 1987. He won the Archibald Prize in 1975 and 1977, the Sulman Prize in 1991 and the Dobell Prize in 1993.

In 1995, in discussing his self-portrait entry, Connor said that self-portraiture 'is the only portrait you can paint objectively – it is almost a classical exercise and a great discipline… I had been thinking of painting someone else but I knew that what I was looking for in another person is, in fact, what you find in yourself’.