TWO UP
Peter and Roy Churcher
Working in diametrically opposite styles, father and son Roy and Peter Churcher nevertheless share a lifelong passion for painting.
Peter Churcher grew up in art ‘royalty’. His mother Betty is the former director of the National Gallery of Australia, and his father Roy has established a long and distinguished career as an abstract painter.
Originally from the UK, Roy Churcher studied at the Slade School of Art in London in the 1950s and has taught art in Brisbane, Perth and Canberra for over thirty years. Now at 73, he continues to paint and exhibit and is represented by Ray Hughes Gallery in Sydney.
Brisbane born Peter, 43, abandoned an early career as a concert pianist to devote his life to figurative painting. In 2002, he was appointed Official War Artist for Australia and was sent to the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan. He currently resides in Barcelona, Spain, and exhibits with Australian Galleries (Sydney and Melbourne) and Philip Bacon Galleries in Brisbane.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
Can you offer us a favourite anecdote or memory of each other?
Roy Churcher
We were at the beach. Peter and his brother Tim earnestly building sandcastles. I was looking at them, enjoying their absorption, when Peter rose to a standing position, his arms slowly being lifted then lowered against his body. He continued this action until – flash – a gull swept over us. He then returned to his sandcastle. Peter uses painting for the most primitive of acts – to create empathy with the subject he has become absorbed by – and always has.
Peter Churcher
My father was always a bit of a ‘bohemian’ who thwarted the conservative morays of the Brisbane I grew up in. When shorts and knee-length socks were the accepted summer attire of Brisbane men, my father saw the South Pacific ‘laptop’ as a far more sensible option. Where all my friend’s dads drove FJ Holdens, my father opted for a growling Volkswagen.
In my desperate need to ‘blend-in’ with the Brisbane status quo of my childhood, I was most anxious not to expose my school friends to the eccentricities of my father’s ways. For this reason, I would beg him not to drive right up to the school entrance if he was picking me up. As I was spinning yet another ‘tall story’ to my friends about how my father’s Falcon was at the mechanics and that I would be walking home, the unmistakable sound of Dad’s kombi would be heard whining its way towards the school.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
How would you describe your relationship?
Roy Churcher
A battle when he was younger. He is so strong-willed that the alternative to battle was always to give way – generally to everyone’s advantage.
Peter Churcher
My father and I have always had a very close yet volatile relationship. He has always supported my intrinsic needs fully and has always seen to it that they are fulfilled … but always with a huge fight in the process. When I needed timber to fuel my handbill kiln in the backyard he would drive miles to get it. Similarly, when I got fixated on rearing poultry he drove me all around the outskirts of Brisbane to find chickens. When I discovered music, he insisted on buying a piano which the family could not afford … but we would always be screaming at each other all the way.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
How would you describe each other’s work and what do you admire about it?
Roy Churcher
Contemporary Realism. I enjoy that he makes traditional realism into a tool to express his feelings for the contemporary world.
Peter Churcher
As I see it, my father is a painter absolutely of his generation … wedded to the ideals of modernism. What gives his work and career weight though is his broad and profound understanding of all forms of art from the cave paintings of Lascaux to the present day. His work is informed by this knowledge, I think, even though his paintings basically exist in the intuitive and impulsive energies of modernism. Our painting styles, in a way, couldn’t be more different, yet we essentially speak the same language and he has never felt disconnected or removed from my work.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
How do you think Roy’s artistic career impacted Peter’s desire to become a painter?
Roy Churcher
I don’t think very much. He is by nature far more traditional and his discipline grew out of classical music, with its emphasis on structure and performance. His mother had painted with sensitive realism which he enjoyed as example rather than my painting, which I guess grew from Post-Impressionism.
Peter Churcher
It never occurred to me at the time, as a child, living amongst his paints and brushes, that I too would become a painter. But I suppose
the everyday naturalness of devoting one’s life to making art made an enduring impact on me. One thing I knew for sure though, was that if I were ever to be a painter, I would be much more disciplined and determined than he ever was. He was never a lazy painter, he worked in the studio every day to the best of my memory … he just got distracted too easily by the joys that life had to offer.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
How have you influenced each other creatively/personally?
Roy Churcher
Only by our insistence on the primary importance of what we are making.
Peter Churcher
My father has always been a great supporter of my interests and a great teacher as well. I have a memory of him going through a book of artists’ drawings through the ages with me when I was probably only about 7 or 8 years old. He was explaining the different ways an artist expresses line by comparing a Rembrandt pen and ink drawing to a Paul Klee etching. And I was getting it. I think I should be very grateful for such lessons at such an early age.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
What do you disagree on?
Peter Churcher
Lots of things … how to roast a chicken, politics, religion, you name it.
Roy Churcher
That I think that Kandinsky was a wonderful painter.
Victoria Hynes for Australian Art Review:
What do you enjoy doing together when you are in each other’s company?
Roy Churcher
Drinking red wine, cooking and occasionally looking at art, mainly prior to the twentieth century.
Peter Churcher
Listening to music and generally talking over too many glasses of wine about art, life and all the stuff that matters. A lot of things matter to both of us … this is our bond.
