Ken done > Permanent Collection
Postcard from God 1976, oil on canvas, 110 x 164cm
Although I’d been painting all my life, this is really the first, large picture that I had exhibited in a major exhibition, and it’s an exhibition called the Blake Prize, which deals with religious art. I guess I wanted to make a postcard that in a sense, if there is a God, you should be thinking of Him always, which I’ve written on the painting, and also you should be thinking of Him and He should be thinking of you. In a sense I guess the figure in there amongst the palm trees looks a bit like me because I believe that if there is a God it’s within all people. So, on one side I made these amazing tropic palm trees, and on the other side, like a postcard I’ve written ‘Thinking of you always’, that if there is a God that’s what you should be doing and if you believe in Him then I guess that’s what He should be doing too. And I’d also written, like a postcard, the pleasures of the eyes, the pleasures of food, the pleasures of the flesh and the pleasures of the sun and I guess these are all the kind of things that I like. It’s like a sort of floating postcard on a decorative background and the most surprising thing for me is that the morning after the Blake Prize this painting was singled out by the then-critic of the Sydney Morning Herald, Nancy Borlaise and appeared on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald with a very complimentary review. So it was really encouraging to me: the first painting I’d ever put in a major exhibition to be so well reviewed and cause a little bit of controversy.
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