HARRY PIDGEON
Australian | Born 1943 | Landscape & Nature Painter
Harry Pidgeon is an award-winning Australian artist best known for his distinctive watercolours of landscape, wildlife and the natural environment. A Modern Realist painter, his work combines close observation with strong design, exploring colour, pattern, light, reflection and the intricate relationships between forms in nature.
Pidgeon grew up in the New England region of New South Wales, surrounded by mountains, ravines, dramatic skies and small country towns. From childhood he developed a fascination with the bush and its wildlife, spending time observing and drawing flowers, birds and animals. Remarkably, by the age of seven he was already painting outdoors alongside Adult Art Education students from Armidale Teachers College.
Determined from an early age to become an artist, Pidgeon studied at Sydney's National Art School, graduating in 1965. His approach to watercolour was already distinctive, using the medium with a strength and intensity more commonly associated with oil painting. Among the artists who influenced his development were Paul Klee, Edward Hopper, Lyonel Feininger and Wayne Thiebaud.
Following his studies, Pidgeon worked as a graphic artist and art director with the international advertising agency J. Walter Thompson. This background in graphic design can be seen in the strong structure, clarity and pattern that characterise much of his later painting. Around 1980 he left advertising to pursue painting full-time. During the following five years he won more than fifty art awards in Sydney, Brisbane and regional centres throughout Australia.
Nature has remained at the heart of Pidgeon's work. His subjects range from sweeping landscapes and marine environments to more intimate studies of birds, flowers and foliage. Rather than simply recording what he sees, he transforms these elements into carefully constructed compositions in which pattern, form, colour, light and shadow become equally important. His watercolours are particularly notable for their luminosity and unusually rich colour.
Pidgeon has presented more than twenty-eight solo or feature exhibitions and has participated in numerous group exhibitions in Australia and overseas. His exhibition history extends over several decades; Art & Australia, for example, records a Harry Pidgeon watercolour exhibition in 1992 and a further exhibition of his paintings at Cooks Hill Galleries in 2000.
His works are represented in public, corporate and private collections in Australia and internationally, including British Royal, Australian Vice-Regal and Australian Government collections, as well as collections in Brazil, Chile, Canada, Japan, the Philippines and the United States.
