
Showgirl 2004	Winter Hat 1998	Beth 1999

Audra 1997	Reclining Nude 2005	Profile (Yvette) 1990

Chinese Vase 2010	Antique Vase – Japanese 1998	Flowers Inside 2010

Granny Smiths and Pear 1984	Quince in a Blue Vase 1985	Fruit and Jug 1994

Lif In Fancy Dress 2003	Christiana 2008	Josephine 2004

Helga 2009	Tess 2009	Michaela 1989

Eastern View 1985	Aireys After Fire c. 1983	Steppes Beach, Aireys Inlet c.1985

Seated Figure (Dalit)	Roesha 2008	Young Man in Cap 2001

A Young Woman 1998	Yvette 1991	The Italian Girl 2000

White Camellias 2010	Golden Delicious 1994	Bathers 1990

Lif 2005	Scarlet and Black 1992	Dalit (Figure by the Window) 1990

The Wattle

A.W (Bill) Harding

Selected Paintings from 1983 – 2010

5 - 19 March 2011

Click here to view biography

Bill Harding has selected thirty five paintings for this exhibition which spans three decades.

Born in Melbourne in 1930, Bill Harding is a painter in the old-school sense. He was a student, friend and painting mate of William Frater who at times joined him to paint the coast and hinterland near Aireys Inlet with David Newbury and others.

Bill Harding’s intellectual concerns underlie a straightforward painting approach. Simple motifs and expressive, free brushwork reflect his desire to respond directly to his subject:

Once immersed in a room of his paintings a spectator can feel the calm, knowledge, care and sensuality of a finely tuned vision. He uses a disciplined palette, a uniform brush size and often the plainest of board supports. Bill renders his subjects and figures with a quietude that steadies then transcends a moment in time.
(Lesley Harding 1997)

Harding’s work indicates a mastery of tonality and his effortless, intimate placing of the figure in pictorial space reveals as much about the artist as it does about the subject. It is clear on viewing any of Bill’s works that he has a deep affection for the process of painting and for his subjects: the people, the flowers or a coastal view all speak to us from the artist’s viewpoint and the sensation that was felt.

Bill Harding was awarded the Geelong Gallery Acquisitive Prize in 1961 and ’62. He is also represented in the Bendigo, Castlemaine and Benalla Regional Galleries, and Deakin and Monash Universities. Other awards include Victorian Artists Society in 1962, ‘66, ’69 and ’74 (including Artist of the Year in 1992) and the Nada Hunter Portrait Award in 2009.