An essay on affinities the exhibition of brett whitely and lloyd rees

Whiteley has exaggerated many of Wendy’s features such as the elongated limbs and piercing blue colour of the eye in order to portray Wendy’s beauty. This emphasis shows the audience the love that Whiteley felt for his wife. The artwork is a tool used to draw the audience into his world.

The work is initially very unbalanced as it is a form of asymmetrical triptych with each panel a different size. However, Whiteley cleverly disguises the balance within the work by rebalancing it through the warm colour palette and image repetition.

Whiteley spent a part of his teenage hood at the boarding school but dropped out in 1954 to work in advertising. He also attended a night drawing class at the Ashton Art school in Sydney. At the age of sixteen, Whiteley’s passion and appreciation of art was firmly established.

The young Brett Whiteley felt a strong connection to the art world which was of a very serious nature and mature for his age. In 1959, Whiteley left advertising to concentrate on painting. That year he won the Italian Government Travelling Art Scholarship and began travelling to places such as Naples, London and Paris.