, and her collection of Brett Whiteley paintings – numbering almost 2000 artworks – to the Art Gallery of NSW and the Brett Whiteley Foundation.
Whiteley was taught by abstract impressionist John Passmore and sculptor Lyndon Dadswell. She was also a peer of Vivienne Binns, whose retrospectiveBinns once recalled that young women studying at East Sydney Tech weren’t regarded as promising in the same way as some male students. Whiteley says it was a commonly held idea in the late 1950s that women should be models or muses.
East Sydney Technical College in the 1960s on the site of the Old Darlinghurst Goal before the name change.From high school art was “the thing I got most pleasure from and the most applause for as well”. When the couple settled back in Lavender Bay years later she bumped into Travis who admonished her for not going on with her painting.
National Art School Director and CEO Steven Alderton has thanked Whiteley on behalf of the talented women who will benefit from her generosity.Louie Douvis