A Shrine to the Artist Ian Fairweather

There have been many books written about the man once regarded as Australia’s finest artist, Ian Fairweather, but few, if any, like this one.

In this moving account of Ian Fairweather’s life story, often narrated through the heart, voice and eyes of his friends and acquaintances, the author describes the artist’s harsh early upbringing in London and Jersey; his war years; his time in a German prison camp; the desperate periods of aimless wandering throughout the Orient; the perilous raft voyage from Darwin to Timor; the construction of Fairweather’s Polynesian-style huts in the bush; and his final years battling illness and civilisation’s encroachment on Bribie Island.

Some of the most evocative passages in this book occur when the author assumes the simple role of natural storyteller, employing his own vivid recollections as well as those of other Fairweather admirers he has sometimes known. The result is a book which offers new light on the existence of the great artist and fills in gaps about Fairweather’s life usually reserved for legend, myth or hearsay. Few accounts, past or present, could ever tell the story of the artist’s sojourn on Bribie Island like this book does.