Angus Nivison Portrait of Chandler Coventry

Angus Nivison’s connection with Sydney art dealer Chandler Coventry goes back to his childhood when, as a young country boy, he began to show a propensity for painting. Uncertain what to do about this, his parents asked Coventry, who had a gallery in Sydney and a property near the Nivison home, to look at their son’s artwork. Coventry was happy to oblige and has been a mentor ever since.

Not wanting to take advantage of the relationship, Nivison began his career exhibiting with another gallery but recently joined Coventry’s Sydney gallery, which feels like a very natural move.

Three years ago Coventry asked Nivison to paint his portrait for the Archibald. Coventry had been the subject of a prize-winning portrait by Nigel Thompson in 1983. Nivison, a non-representational painter, was sceptical at first but finally agreed. ‘And I actually enjoyed doing it,’ he says. Although the painting did not make it into the Archibald, it was selected for the Salon des Refusés, earning him a glowing review. Since then Nivison has continued to dabble in portraiture and felt that the time had come to paint ‘Channy’ again, and this time it was he who asked Chandler.

‘He’s very forceful and forthright, in fact, he is brutally honest which is a rare quality in the art world,’ says Nivison. ‘But he also worries like everyone else which is part of what I was trying to get across.’

Born in Walcha, NSW, in 1953, Nivison studied at the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College and at the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education. He won the Muswellbrook Art Prize in 1991 and was represented in the 1996 Wynne Prize. After having been hung in the Salon des Refusés on three occasions, he is delighted to have made it into the Archibald.