About
About the Artist Paul Ashton Delprat
His inspiration is the trees, light, colour and the figures on the beach that form an ever changing tableau at the edge of his garden.
He paints and draws Balmoral Beach and further afield – Headland Park on the ridge of Middle Head in Sydney Harbour and the wild coastline to the North and South.
He is equally happy painting in oils or Acrylics, using pencil, pen or pastel or sculpting in various media and is well known for his figurative etchings.
Biography
Paul Delprat was born in 1942 in Sydney where he was educated at The Sydney Grammar School. His first artistic studies were with his grandfather, J Howard Ashton, later with Henry C Gibbons and his uncle J Richard Ashton at the Julian Ashton Art School, graduating with a Diploma.
Whilst an art student Delprat won The Henry Gibbons Drawing Prize, The Phillip Muskett Landscape Prize, The Le Gay Brereton Drawing Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and The Waratah Festival Sculpture and Drawing Prizes awarded by Mr Rupert Murdoch. He continued his studies in the galleries of London and Paris.
He created the paintings, drawings and sculptures for the Michael Powell film “Age Of Consent” based on a novel by Norman Lindsay, starring James Mason and Dame Helen Mirren. Included in his other work for film were the paintings, pastels and drawings he created for “Sirens” starring Elle McPherson, Portia De Rossi and Sam Neill.
In 1960 he created “The Principality of Wy, The Artists’ Principality”, which was latterly to secede from The Municipality of Mosman in Sydney in 2004. ( see link to website below)
His art is represented in the National Gallery, Canberra, Regional galleries, the B.H.P collection and other public and private collections. Having held over twenty, one man exhibitions in Sydney he has also held exhibitions in London, Canberra, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide and Newcastle. His work has been selected for the Archibald, Sulman and Wynne Exhibitions.
Before joining the Julian Ashton Art School as Principal in 1988, he taught privately and at Sydney and N.S.W Universities, Newington College, and the Australian Independent International School. In 1990, at the Julian Ashton Art school, he inaugurated the school’s Scholarship Program, commencing with the Sir William Dobell Scholarship sponsored by The Sir William Dobell Foundation.
Delprat is Patron of Portrait Artists Australia and The Mosman Art Society and an Associate of the Royal Art Society of New South Wales. He has served as a judge of fine art at many competitions held throughout Australia
Publications include: Kym Bonython: Australian Painting, Max Germaine: Australian Artists, The Australian Encyclopedia, Cedric Flower: Aspects of Australian Erotica, Geoffrey Dutton: The Beach; Hilarie Lindsay: The Etchings of Paul Delprat, Hilarie Lindsay: The Naked Gourmet. Periodicals; Illustrations for the Sydney Morning Herald, Penguin books, The Bulletin, Quadrant magazine and other journals.
Delprat lives near Balmoral Beach in Sydney, where his current art practice includes drawing, pastel painting, landscape, figure and portraiture in oils, etching and sculpture. His ongoing creative installation is: www.principalityofwy.com, The Artists’ Principality, a multi facetted artistic imperative having a provenance of half a century in 2010 -and which is described by the UK Economist Magazine as a local micro-secession.