Ian Fairweather's Drunken Buddha Paintings Reunited at Tarrawarra

THE GUARDIAN
By Fiona Gruber

Spiritual: a detail from Ian Fairweather’s On The Lake. Photograph: Ian Fairweather/DACS

AUSTRALIA---In the pantheon of 20th century Australian artists, the reclusive, eccentric and much-travelled painter Ian Fairweather has an exalted status. Fairweather said of painting that “it gives me the same kind of satisfaction that religion, I imagine, gives to some people” and his works include a series of paintings based on the life of the mischievous and inebriated Buddhist monk Chi-Tien, who lived in China in the 13th century. The Drunken Buddha series has just gone on display at Tarrawarra Museum of Art, north-east of Melbourne, the first time the paintings have been brought together since their showing at Sydney’s Macquarie gallery in 1965.[link]