User:Sawatdeekha

Kevin Parratt, Australian artist, born Kevin Nigel Roy Parratt, on the 13th of June, 1949, in Dagenham, England. When a year old, the family emigrated to Australia. Parratt actually took his first steps at sea on board the ship MV. Dorsetshire.

Early years

Kevin Parratt's early childhood years were spent in the suburbs of Melbourne, moving from one place to the next, in his father's never ending quest to improve the family's living conditions. They had arrived in Australia with nothing. In his own words, the most significant move being in 1955 to the township of Upwey, past Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong ranges. It was here he had the first real taste of 'the bush', which has remained a lasting passion.

Recalling a later secondary school excursion to the National Gallery of Victoria: "To see my love affair with the Australian bush, so beautifully rendered in the works of Frederick McCubbin and the other Heidelberg School artists was something of a revelation. I felt for the first time that someone really understood me."

Uninterested in the endless drudgery of middle suburbia, Parratt moved several times, going from the bush to the city center, and back to the bush again, mostly to the locality of Warrandyte where he had become known within the community.

Images to follow

The 1970s (Under preparation)

Source: First of a series of interviews with the Artist, Oslo January 2010

JJ 'Sawatdeekha'