This was published 10 years ago
Exhibition features portraits of Graeme Doyle by artist Peter Wegner
By Larry Schwartz
Peter Wegner thought he recognised the features of a Melbourne friend in a grotesque sculpture of the 19th-century novelist, Honore de Balzac, in Paris a few years ago.
Winner of awards including the 2006 Doug Moran National Portrait Prize for one of a series of the artist and poet, Graeme Doyle, Wegner went on to do a small drawing of sculptor Auguste Rodin's memorial to Balzac.
Artist Peter Wegner (right) with Graeme Doyle.Credit: Pat Scala
''I couldn't believe it,'' Wegner says. ''When I'd finished I thought, my God, this is Graeme Doyle. I am channelling Doyle.''
Wegner has chronicled his enduring friendship with Doyle, who has schizophrenia, since they met as art students at the former Phillip Institute of Technology in the early 1980s. Doyle, a performance poet, will tell you the portraits are ''Peter's achievement''.
Wegner, however, insists it has been a collaborative process. ''In a way, it should have Peter Wegner on one side of the canvas and then Graeme Doyle should sign the other,'' he says.
Wegner is exhibiting paintings and drawings of his friend at the Australian Galleries in Collingwood this month. They are among at least 300 drawings, paintings, sculptures and etchings Wagner has completed of his troubled friend, including nine sketches the Art Gallery of NSW recently acquired for its collection.
Wegner says his paintings of Doyle over the decades ''reference so many artists''. He mentions some who have influenced him - the 19th-century French artist Honore Daumier and 20th-century French painter Chaim Soutine.
Describing Doyle's willingness to be depicted without attempt to gloss over his physical and mental decline, he cites Spanish artist Francisco Goya, some of whose more confronting work is said to have reflected the painter's struggle with mental illness.
''I am painting who he is at the time that I am painting him,'' he says. ''I am painting the warts and all on that day and, look, some of them are pretty brutal. They have never ever been pretty paintings, ever.
''He's incredibly comfortable with it … I would say, oh my God, you look absolutely shocking Graeme. And he would come around and look at it and say, 'Ah fantastic!'
''It's like Goya all of a sudden has this muse that says, 'More black, more black'.''
Wegner laughs at this.
When I call on the artist and his muse at Wegner's studio at the semi-rural outer edge of Melbourne, he tells Doyle that had British painter Francis Bacon - who died more than 20 years ago - lived on, he ''would have looked like you''.
''Poor fella,'' laughs Doyle, posing on a couch.
Wegner first asked his friend to sit for a portrait in about 1985. ''I had no idea what schizophrenia was. It is a real learning curve to find out what happens to somebody.''
They enjoyed each other's company, had much in common, would talk about poetry, philosophy, art history and music. They'd meet fortnightly at one stage, nicknaming their collaboration The Project. ''Sometimes I would just do a drawing. Sometimes I would just take some copper and do an etching.''
Doyle remembers the early sittings. ''I thought he was a really good bloke and when he asked I thought, this will be lovely. I will spend the day with him.''
Peter Wegner's Still Meeting - Portraits of G.D., is at the Australian Galleries, Collingwood, until May 4.