about don edgar
Don Edgar
About me
Seeing more dimensions – in color
“After a busy life teaching in universitites and then establishing the Institute of Family Studies and writing academic books, it’s great to have the time to renew my life-long hobby of drawing and painting. Many of my paintings are the result of sketches done whilst travelling abroad and within Australia.”
– 78 years
inspiration
Inspiring grandkids–
I was inspired to really get back into painting seriously by my wife’s writing of a children’s book about tooth fairies based on the letters our grandchildren sent to the fairies. This collaboration resulted in “The Fairies of Plant Street”, a children’s picture story book for which I did hundreds of watercolor paintings.
This venture inspired our 10 year old grandson Ace Buck to ask me to show him how to paint watercolors and , as a focus, my wife wrote another children’s book called “Big Fat Porkies and Little White Lies”, with the illustrations done by him.
Life during covid and after my stroke
Though I’m still writing since my Stroke in 2020, the painting has been good therapy for me.
I’ve enjoyed creating “Covid in the park” during the first lockdown in Melbourne 2020, “Life’s a Circus” and my most recent watercolor of the community gardens in Abbotsford.
“You’re never too old to learn”.
more info.....
A lifetime interest in drawing and painting has given Don Edgar a respite from heavy academic work and public activism. Best known as the foundation Director of the Australian Institute of Family Studies, Don has written many books (ranging from work-family balance, child development, men, mateship & marriage, child poverty, community-building to ageing), his most recent being ART FOR THE COUNTRY: The story of Victoria’s regional art galleries.
But painting in oils, watercolour and acrylic has been an ongoing hobby, particularly enjoyed during long bouts of illness and lengthy COVID-19 lockdowns. There were no role models in his working class family background, but he remembers an uncle showing him how to use watercolours, and his sister used oil paints to hand colour sepia photographs of people in a photography studio. His main inspiration came from time spent watching a Tasmanian artist, one of the early Australian Impressionist School, Charles E. Ritchie, work on pastel portraits and oil landscapes in his studio.
Don’s career, however, would not be in art. He won scholarships to take him to Melbourne University and became a secondary school teacher in History, French and English literature, before being seconded to train teachers at the University of Melbourne’s Secondary Teachers’ College.
From there, he went on to get a PhD in Sociology at Stanford University, California and was then Assistant Professor & Research Associate at the University of Chicago, before returning to work at Monash and La Trobe Universities.
His interest in country art galleries had begun in his Matriculation year at Warrnambool High School and continued when he chaired the Australian Schools Commission’s Country Area Project, building on the hidden resources (artistic, musical and technical) of people living in rural areas.
Don later married Patricia Etherington who was, by coincidence, the daughter of the man who drove a whole new movement to establish art galleries across country Victoria, Reg Etherington of Mildura which culminated in his writing of the book ART FOR THE COUNTRY.
Work demands meant little time for painting other than an occasional piece for home decoration, but once full-time work ended and grandchildren came along, there was a new impetus.
Daughter Lesley had established a thriving design business OzscapeDesigns and Don did some work for her to adapt in merchandise.
Then his wife Patricia challenged him to illustrate a children’s story book she had written and he rediscovered an ability with watercolours.
He then taught grandson Ace to illustrate another book and his hobby painting took off from there.
Much of Don’s work was done on trips abroad, doing sketches instead of photographing the sites. So there is a lot of variety in his output.