Donald Friend

Friend’s art is warm, pleasure-loving, and technically accomplished — figures rendered with an elegant economy of line, compositions suffused with colour and pattern, a world view that celebrated beauty, pleasure, and the richness of human experience without apology. He was also a gifted writer and diarist, and his published journals remain among the most entertaining documents in Australian cultural life.

His collaboration with Fred Genis produced one of the most distinctive publications in the Australian collection — Songs of the Vagabond Scholars, published by Beagles Press in Sydney in 1982, comprising fourteen original lithographs in a limited edition of one hundred. The four seasonal prints — Autumn, Winter, Spring, and Summer — form the lyrical heart of the suite, reflecting Friend’s characteristic delight in the human figure moving through a sensuous, beautifully observed natural world. It is a publication that reflects the best of both artist and printer — generous, beautifully crafted, and made with genuine love for the medium.

Donald Friend died in Sydney in 1989. His work is held in every major Australian public collection.