Henry Dearing: Decentering Australian Art

Abstract

The paintings and drawings of Henry Dearing came to the attention of the art world in 1944 when the artist’s depictions of country life appeared in the Australian literary journal “Angry Penguins.” Since that time, there have been several exhibitions and scholarly examinations of Dearing’s art. However, ingrained attitudes of artists, curators, and writers have obscured the works’ deeper significance, artificially restricted the scope of Australian art history, and ignored the broader questions posed by Dearing’s work about the categories habitually applied to discussions of modern art. This essay seeks to address these issues by presenting a new interpretation of the artist’s work.