BIOGRAPHY

 
Ross Coady was born in 1944 and grew up in Turramurra, on Sydney’s North Shore. In 1963, while he was an architecture student at Sydney University, he began painting with Molly Johnson, a student of Max Meldrum.  After a year, he found Meldrum’s tonal approach empty and in 1964, influenced by the more adventurous paintings of his friend Colin Mitchell, he was introduced to the John Ogburn Studio at Circular Quay.  He continued there until 2009 and says that through the years John Ogburn’s teaching introduced him to great painters and  taught him approaches to painting which have sustained him throughout his creative life.  Involvement with the Harrington Street Gallery, and fellow artists there, has also been a great support and encouragement.
 
After graduation he practised architecture for a short time in Sydney and London, but then ventured into teaching, firstly Architecture students at The Institute of Technology (now UTS) and then Visual Arts students at Shore (SCEGS), where he became Head of Visual Arts.
 
From 1970 to 1973 he exhibited at Watters Gallery and The Arts Council Gallery, and since then he has exhibited annually at Harrington Street Gallery.
 
Over the years he has travelled widely, but in the past twenty years his love of painting and architecture has drawn him, for more extended periods, to his favourite cities, Madrid and Paris.
 
A desire to express a feeling or simply a desire to paint is necessary for me when setting forth on a painting. I must then allow the painting itself to reveal to me where it wants to go, what it wants to be.  Enabling it to achieve this unique being is my ultimate task and fulfilment as a painter.
 
I would like to think I have been influenced by some of the great painters of the past.  From the more distant past, I particularly love Carpaccio and Tintoretto, then Corot and Courbet, and from the Modern Movement, Bonnard, Vuillard, Braque, and Gris.
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