Alan Oldfield was born in Sydney’s industrial inner west,the son of a fitter and turner,whose success was very much a tribute to the quality of education made available to bright students in Australia in the immediate post war years. He discovered art because the local Marrickville library was designated to specialise in art books. At the age of eleven he was awarded the children’s prize in the local Rockdale Art Prize.
By the time Oldfield started high school the family had moved to a new house in Sydney’s south-west suburban sprawl where he attended East Hills Boys High, one of the new comprehensive schools that enabled all NSW school children to complete their secondary education. Bright boys were placed in the academic stream away from art, but his Latin teacher was Bill Collins, later to achieve national fame for his love of the cinema, so he was taught well. Oldfield left school at the age of fourteen with his Intermediate Certificate and enrolled in the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College. This introduced Oldfield to a world of freedom away from the restrictions of the suburbs. The camaraderie between staff and students and the self-conscious bohemianism of inner Sydney took him forever away from the restrictions of the suburbs. He enjoyed a robust social life, which included several spectacular appearances at the annual artists balls. He once recalled walking down Oxford Street as dawn was breaking, wearing nothing but glitter under his coat.
The teaching was however less impressive. He later told James Gleeson that he found the teaching 'absolutely appalling’. Nevertheless it enabled him to join the lively young New York influenced radical artists gathered at Sydney’s Central Street Gallery, and he first made his mark as a hard edge colour field painter with an exhibition at the recently opened Watters Gallery. In 1968 he was one of the younger artists selected for the ground-breaking The Field exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria. Also at this time he wrote articles for the short lived art magazine, Other Voices.
- Writers:
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- Date written:
- 2011
- Last updated:
- 2011
