Dick Watkins David Moore

David Moore is a renowned Australian photographer. He began his professional career in Sydney in 1947 and has worked as an international photojournalist and an architectural and industrial photographer. He has been a leading figure in getting photography recognised as a significant creative medium.

Dick Watkins has known Moore for close to 20 years. He hasn’t painted him before but now rather wonders why. “I think he’s a great photographer and a great man. He’s an ideal subject because he’s so full of character and has such a wonderful, craggy style,” he says. “I had this fairly large canvas so I thought I’d go horizontal. We put his knees up at one end and it just worked. The colours are more or less abstract but jazzed up a bit. I think it captures his personality though he does mostly black and white photographs.” Asked if he considered painting him in black and white because of that he says not. “But it would have been a good idea!”

Born in Sydney in 1937, Watkins is a largely self-taught artist. He was selected for the Wynne and Sulman Prizes in 1995 and has had portraits in the Archibald Prize in 1998 and 2001, when he painted Adam Cullen, who is also a finalist in this year’s Archibald Prize.