Psychedelic Australian pop artist Martin Sharp died in Sydney on Sunday aged seventy after suffering from a long-term illness, according to a report filed by The Sydney Morning Herald.
Sharp is regarded by many as one of the nation’s greatest artists and is considered our foremost pop artist, having created iconic, riotously colourful and emblematic work for legendary 60s performers
Cream (
Disraeli Gears album art pictured below),
Bob Dylan and
Jimi Hendrix, as well as enduring versions of
Luna Park’s equal parts terrifying and thrilling clown face entrance and Sydney’s ‘
Eternity‘ signature. News of his passing on Sunday was confirmed by fellow artist
Garry Shead, who said of his friend (and the subject of his entry into last year’s Archibald Prize), “To do one painting he’ll take years. He’ll go over it. It’s a magnificent obsession … He’s striving for perfection.”
In the same interview with Fairfax conducted last year, an ailing Sharp, a close friend of the late Margaret Olley, said, “Life’s a total experiment. You never know what’s going to happen and you’ve got to be able to move fast.”
“I am not one of these so fashionable these days who think there is no God, as if the universe just fell out of the sky, or one found it in one’s pocket… Here we are, in the midst of the creation, endless mysterious, unknowable, magnificent, beautiful and terrible. How? Why? One can only be humble to the creator and hope to be useful whilst one can.
I have always found friendship one of the greatest vehicles of usefulness. I never would have thought art would lead me into all these endless realms of thought. But here we are.”
