Provenance:
Lord Alistair McAlpine, Australian City Properties Perth
Exhibited: 
Sidney Nolan Retrospective, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2 
November 2007 - 3 February 2008, then touring.
Illustrated: 
Barry Pearce, Sidney Nolan, Beagle Press for the Art Gallery of
New South Wales, 2007, plate 113, p.223. 

Forever the innovator, in the 1980s Nolan began experimenting with spraycan enamel which, like the Ripolin enamel of much earlier decades, blended the colours on the canvas. In 1987 Jane Clark described the artist’s spraycan technique: 'He manipulates the spray with speed and precision; working at constantly varying distances from the canvas to create veils of pigment, layer upon airy layer.'1

Painted when the artist was sixty-eight, Flowers 1985 is reminiscent of the work of Howard Arkley, an artist many years his junior. The restriction of the image to the surface of the picture plane prefigures the flower paintings of Tim Maguire, while the pinks, blues and mauves, and the fluidity of the forms recall Monet. The spiky yellow plant and the red ochre add an Australian tone to the painting.
AL

1Clark J., Sidney Nolan: Landscapes and Legends, ICCA, Sydney, 1987, p.171.