Robert Dickerson
“I try to paint something that will be different from all the rubbish everywhere. Everybody is trying to run away from facing certain issues. My work is a protest against that if you like; but I am not trying to prove something. I just paint what I feel like painting.”
Robert (Bob) Dickerson was born in 1924, and grew up in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville during the 1930s Great Depression era. By age 14 he was working in a factory whilst he trained as a boxer, and later joined Jimmy Sharman’s Boxers. “Boxing was purely about money. I was earning 16 shillings (A$1.60) working a 44-hour week and could make two to five pounds (A$4 to A$10) if I won a fight. Minutes in the ring seemed like years, but you cope with what you have to and we needed the money—badly.”
Dickerson was a self-taught artist who refused to go art school and took up drawing at 5 and turned professional at age 35. He was a founding member of The Antipodeans art movement, a group of figurative artists including Charles Blackman, John Brack, Arthur Boyd, Clifton Pugh, David Boyd and Bernard Smith, making a statement opposing abstractionism in their day.
In 2013 he was awarded an AO for his outstanding contribution to the visual arts and community service to the many charities he supported.
Dickerson continued to paint and exhibit regularly for the next five decades before his death at age 91 in Nowra, NSW in 2015.
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