Geoff Dixon: Portraits of Us

Streaming video - 2022

Geoff Dixon’s art reflects his vision for our future unless we take immediate action – he was working as a conservationist long before the word became part of our everyday vocabulary. His paintings are rich with colour, commentary, and a challenge to all of us to wake up and think about the future of our wildlife, our flora and fauna, our country and our planet. New Zealand-born and now living and working in Australia, in north Queensland, Geoff grew up and found/discovered his sexuality in the conservative Christchurch of the early seventies. The film introduces us to the people who influenced him and who believed in him over the years. We find out about his travels, his ups and downs, what led to his strong sense of the environment an...d why the symbols of bird life have come to inhabit his paintings. Geoff’s work celebrates the birds we have around us, as well as those that are on the verge of extinction in Australasia, and reflects on the state of our ecology. He says that the paintings are, at the same time, ‘portraits of us’. The film also explores his close relationship over many years with the late Australian Indigenous artist, Arone Meeks. more