Kevin Connor

Kevin Connor is one of Australia’s best known draughtsmen andcontemporary painters of the urban environment. His bold and expressive imagesof city streets and their inhabitants have been part of the visual vocabularyof Sydney since the early 1960s.

Kevin Connor is represented in Australia’s most important galleries andcollection. This includes The Australian National Gallery, all state galleries,and many regional galleries. He has also been awarded some of the mostprestigious awards, such as the Archibald prize, The Sulman Prize, and Dobellprize for drawing. He has had over fifty one-person exhibitions in bothAustralia and overseas.

Connor was born in 1932 in Sydney. At the age of 15 he began as anapprentice commercial artist. During this time he studied painting and drawingat East Sydney Technical College. Connor’s passion for the life of the city is the basis for most of hiswork. This began in Sydney, where he painted Newtown terraces, streets inParramatta and inner city pubs.  In1954 he left for Europe, and was particularly inspired by what he saw. Urbanscenes such as the Gare du Nord in Paris, and the inner city streets of Londonprovided ideal setting for him to sketch. He also travelled further throughEurope, to America and the Middle East.

On his return to Australia he continued with his well-known series ofHaymarket paintings. This inner city area of Sydney provided an ideal settingfor Connor. The painting The Kiss, Haymarket 1963 is an excellent example ofthis series. In 2006 the Art Gallery of New South Wales held an exhibition onKevin Connor; Sketchbooks, Drawings and Studies.