IT wasn’t a happy accident, but it was an auspicious one.
In late 1947, sixteen-year-old Gordon Rintoul had all but finished his composition for the practical art examination Leaving Certificate, when he spilt a bottle of black Indian ink over his meticulously drawn illustration, see Crossroads story below.
In that moment, time not so much stood still but collapsed onto the hopes of the high school student in the town of Young, in the South Western slopes region of New South Wales.
In that moment, young Gordon could have felt as though he had ruined not just his exam drawing but his very future, as he was working towards gaining a scholarship to become an art teacher.
Gordon’s eyes had been opened to a future in art by a Salvador Dali print in the school library. That image had both fascinated and inspired Gordon, showing him what could be done with art, and what an artist could do with perception.
Yet what lay before Gordon right now was a work that looked not surrealist but more like one of those new, eye-popping abstract expressionist paintings coming out of the United States. Only Gordon’s creation to secure his future didn’t look cutting-edge but dream-destroying.
In that moment, he could have crumpled up the paper and tossed his dreams into the bin.
Instead, Gordon grabbed a sheet of blank paper and, with the 30 minutes or so remaining in the exam, he made marks that he described as urgent and spontaneous.
‘What had happened was not inspiration but desperation and adrenaline,’ Gordon Rintoul wrote in 2009, more than 60 years after that seminal incident in the exam room.
But from desperation and adrenaline came creation. And from the moment that could have crushed his future, Gordon conjured a drawing that earned him a teaching scholarship. What’s more, he gained a key lesson for a life in art.
• • • • • • •
DURING his long art career, Gordon Rintoul often observed destruction and degradation and then performed creative alchemy by turning that observation into something visually compelling.
To perform that alchemy, Gordon came to the right place in the 1970s. His work in education brought him to the industrial city of Newcastle. The massive steelworks at the heart of the city not only churned out products to be shipped around the nation and the globe, its presence moulded the look and reputation of Newcastle. It was ‘Steel City’.
Newcastle’s industries, with their stacks pumping emissions into the air, not only had a visual impact on Gordon. As he noted, those emissions created respiratory issues for him.
Yet again, Gordon Rintoul turned a challenge into a creative journey. The very things that made breathing more laboured for him released a torrent of inspiration for Gordon; the stacks became a symbol he returned to repeatedly in his ‘industrial’ paintings.
Gordon Rintoul transposed the look and feel of industrial Newcastle with paint. Yet those works transcend both time and place, as they explore the effects of industry on human beings, and on the environment.
So many of these works burn with an expressionist intensity and vigour, as though they have been freshly extruded from the furnaces of Gordon’s thinking.
And those furnaces of Gordon’s were constantly fired and stoked, forging and creating.
‘He was always painting,’ recalls Gordon’s daughter, Sue Lalor, herself an artist. ‘He was always experimenting around process, and around materials. He always worked with different ways to bring something to the canvas.’
What Gordon Rintoul brought to the canvas was a feast of ideas, along with materials fit for a feast. To give his paintings texture and often a feel of grittiness, Gordon experimented with coffee grounds, and he often used cooked spaghetti.
While working on a painting at Bilgola Plateau, on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, Gordon exhausted his supply of dried spaghetti, so he journeyed to the local supplier – the general store.
As Coral Rintoul, Gordon’s wife and creative partner, tells it, the general store owner was surprised to see Gordon yet again, exclaiming, ‘Gosh, you eat a lot of spaghetti in your house!’
• • • • • • •
GORDON Rintoul’s studio is ideally located to pose distractions.
The simple but majestic timber structure nestled into the large Cary Bay property where he and Coral built their home and lives in the 1980s offers filtered views of Lake Macquarie and delicious perspectives of the flourishing and expansive gardens the couple created.
‘It gave him a lot of joy,’ Sue Lalor says of this creative and living space.
As enticing as the world outside the studio is, Gordon Rintoul worked hard. The evidence is in here, with paintings serried in racks and drawings and studies piled in cabinet drawers.
On the studio wall is a hand-written sign, quoting French painter Pierre Bonnard: ‘A picture is half finished if it has a good composition’.
Yet a picture is rarely finished, in the mind of an artist. In the years prior to his death in 2016, Gordon revisited and reworked some of his paintings, even renaming them.
A painting from 1984, titled Newcastle, was reimagined as Rust In Peace, perhaps an allusion to the closure of the BHP steelworks, and the dramatic changes that brought to the city, in 1999.
That painting, along with others Gordon was still working on when he died in 2016, lies in a rack.
Many artists have one eye on the future, and how the future will view them, as they paint. Perhaps that is why Gordon reworked his paintings, ensuring they continued to tell the story he wanted them to.
Gordon also had a clear vision of the past. That vision helped shape his ‘Flags’ series, which he completed while working and studying in New York in 1980. The ‘Flags’ paintings reference giants, such as Mark Rothko, Honoré Daumier and Jasper Johns, and art movements, such as the Fauves. These are paintings that unfurl with the artist’s deep appreciation of art history.
Yet Gordon’s greatest sense of continuum, taking creativity from the past to the future, lay in his teaching, in sharing his knowledge with the next generation of artists. After teaching in high schools, Gordon became involved in tertiary education, including lecturing for many years at the University of Newcastle, where he earned his PhD in fine art.
‘I think he was most proud of the teaching part of his life,’ says Sue Lalor.
As his own studies for his PhD indicate, Gordon was a passionate learner, as well as being an astute observer. That combination fuelled the massive panting series he produced for his PhD. Tapping into his memories of journeying through the stark and stripped countryside around the mining town of Queenstown in Tasmania, Gordon created a panoramic vision across 40 panels. He explored once more the themes of our interaction with the environment, the impact we have, and the damage we do – both to it and to ourselves. Gordon titled the series, Lamentation for lost landscapes.
He may be gone in a physical sense, but Gordon’s observations of, and responses to, the world around him remain with us. His work is held in public and private collections around Australia and overseas, and his art has been featured in more than 50 solo and group exhibitions.
What’s more, the studio’s crowded and colourful interior tells us what the act of creating meant to Gordon. All these paintings, all these drawings and notes and studies, are the legacy of a rich artistic life.
And they remain as a tribute to a boy who, in the face of a disaster, made the most of the time he had to leave his mark.
Scott Bevan
Writer and broadcaster
November 2023
Thank you to Allan Chawner an artist and colleague of Gordon’s, who photographed the majority of the artworks.
EDUCATION
Doctor of Philosophy (Fine Art), University of Newcastle 1999 - 2003
Master Fine Arts, State University of New York, USA 1979 - 1981
Diploma in Art, Hunter Institute of Higher Education1976-78
Art Diploma, Sydney Teachers College 1949 - 1952
WORK HISTORY
Coffs Harbour High, Cowra High, Narrabeen Boys High, Balmain Teacher’s College and the Australian School of Pacific Administration, Alexander Mackie Teachers’ College, The Power Institute, University of Sydney (part time) Newcastle College of Advanced Education, University of Newcastle (part time).
COLLECTIONS
Anne von Bertouch Gallery
Australian Diplomatic Corps
Barry Stern
Goulburn Regional Art Gallery
Maitland Regional Art Gallery
Museum and Art Culture yapang
New England Gallery
Newcastle Art Gallery
Singleton Arts and Cultural Centre
State University of New York
University of Newcastle
University of Sydney
Many other private collections in Australia and overseas
EXHIBITIONS
2019 Wish You Were Here: Landscapes from the Collection Newcastle Art Gallery
2008 Lamentations for Lost Landscapes Burnie Regional Art Gallery, Tasmania
2007 Lamentations for Lost Landscapes Tweed Regional Gallery, Tweed Valley
2006, 2012 Lamentations for Lost landscape Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
2004, 2005, 2006 Four Group Exhibitions, Tighes Hill Art Gallery, Newcastle
2003 PHD Thesis Exhibition University Gallery, University of Newcastle
1999 For the Love of Art Selected Touring Exhibition, NSW Regional Galleries
1999 For the Love of Art Invitation Group Exhibition Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
1998 Journeying across Australia’s vast land Group Exhibition, Newcastle Art Gallery
1997 Images of the Heart Invitation Group Exhibition, Newcastle
1996 Tomato House Invitation Group Exhibition, von Bertouch Galleries
1996 Tomato House Invitation, Tomato House
1996 Images of the Heart Invitation Group Exhibition, Newcastle
1996 Singleton Art Prize
1995 Jubilee Invitation Exhibition William Dobell Gallery, Wangi Wangi NSW
1995 Raymond Terrace Prize
1995 Hung, Drawn and Quartered Group Exhibition, John Paynter Gallery, Newcastle
1994 Raymond Terrace Prize
1992 Homage to the Rough Muse One Man Exhibition Newcastle Art Gallery
1991-99 Collectors Choice Invitation Group Exhibition, von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle
1991 Blake Prize Blaxland Gallery, Sydney
1988-89 Drawing as a Medium Touring Group Exhibition in NSW Regional Galleries
1988 Painting Invitation Prize Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
1987 Newcastle Art Prize Newcastle Art Gallery
1987 NCAE Staff exhibition Muswellbrook Art Gallery
1987 One Man Exhibition Solander Galleries, Canberra
1986 One Man Exhibition, von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle
1986 Diversities Group Exhibition Holdsworth Contemporary Gallery, Sydney
1986 Painting Invitation Prize Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
1985 Industrial Images one man exhibition, Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
1984 Industrial Images one man exhibition Muswellbrook Gallery
1983 NCAE Staff Exhibition Maitland Regional Art Gallery
1983 Artists Educators group show von Bertouch Galleries, Newcastle
1982-87 NCAE Staff Exhibition Maitland Regional Art Gallery
1982 Images of New York One man exhibition Museum of Art and Culture yapang, Lake Macquarie
1981 Large Paintings One man exhibition Woodstock, New York USA
1980 MFA Thesis Exhibition State University of New York, USA
1979 One man exhibition Armstrong Galleries, Morpeth
1979 One man exhibition Maitland Regional Art Gallery
1979 One man exhibition Armstrong Galleries, Morpeth
1978-79 Collectors Choice Invitation group show von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle
1978 One man exhibition von Bertouch Gallery, Newcastle
1978 Maitland Art Prize Maitland Regional Art Gallery
1972 Blake Prize Commonwealth Bank, Sydney
1971 One man exhibition Macquarie Galleries, Canberra
1971 Blake Prize Commonwealth Bank, Sydney
1969 One man exhibition Macquarie Galleries, Sydney
1968 One man exhibition Macquarie Galleries, Canberra
1968 Third Anniversary Group Show Macquarie Galleries, Canberra
1967 One man exhibition Barry Stern Galleries, Sydney
1966 One man exhibition Barry Stern Galleries, Sydney