Adam Cullen Portrait of Frank Moorhouse AM

‘I see Frank Moorhouse as the Frank Sinatra of Australian literature,’ says Adam Cullen. ‘He is a stand-alone talent whose work isn’t easy to categorise; a cool outsider who knows exactly what’s going on on the inside. Like Frank Sinatra it’s all in the phrasing and he doesn’t mince words.’

In the portrait Cullen has tried to capture Moorhouse’s uneasy stance, the way he does not blend into his surroundings, and his esoteric take on life. The painting has been informed, he says, by television and 19th-entury French realism.

Born in Sydney in 1965, Cullen has a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the City Art Institute and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of NSW. He was a finalist in the 1997 Archibald Prize.