BACKGROUND
Born in Herberton in North Queensland in 1941, Warren Palmer liked to draw as a child and Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were favourite subjects. He won the mapping section at the Atherton Show for four consecutive years before discovering oil paints. He went on to win the Open Oil Painting section at the age of 12 for a super-realism style painting of a boat, painted onto a piece of cardboard and copied from a photograph.
Palmer says Jeffrey Smart was his first teacher. Aged eight, and living at Atherton, Warren was a member of the ABC Radio’s Argonaut’s Club. Every Wednesday at 5pm he would drop everything (usually he’d be playing cricket or football) to listen to The Argonauts. He’d send in his drawings and at the end of every program, the parting comment from the presenter, Phidias, who was none other than esteemed Australian artist, Jeffrey Smart, was always: “Keep drawing Argonauts”.
He first formally studied art as a subject in Year 9 and 10 while boarding at Churchie (Anglican Church Grammar School) in Brisbane. When he returned to North Queensland to complete his schooling, he attended art classes at Mareeba High.
Palmer has spent the best part of his adult life teaching art – first as a school art teacher, then at teacher’s college and university. These days he still teaches - one morning a week at the Arts Academy.
He trained to be a schoolteacher at Kelvin Grove Teacher’s Training College then got a two-year scholarship to study art teaching at the Central Technical College (CTC), now part of the College of Art at Griffith University.
After graduating, he taught four periods of art a week at Bremer State High School, along with maths, English and social science before transferring back to CTC to teach. He lectured in drawing and ceramics at QUT from 1971 – 1995.
Palmer sold his first painting to a doctor at Annerley for £5 in 1964. It was a waterscape in “expressionistic, surreal, strong colours”.
His first exhibition was a two-man show at a hotel in Warwick in the early 60s. The ringers were in town and opening night coincided with a ball so “nobody saw it and I didn’t sell anything”.
The artist has held solo exhibitions regularly since 1978, mainly in Brisbane but also at Newcastle and Toowoomba. His most recent exhibition was in Brisbane in September 2009.
As an emerging artist, Palmer entered competitions during the early 1980s and won several awards over a short period, including the Gold Coast Ceramic Award in 1985.
He is represented in a dozen galleries including the Queensland Art Gallery, the Toowoomba Regional Gallery, the Dr Irene Amos Gallery (part of the Toowoomba Regional Gallery) and the Newcastle Regional Gallery.
Warren Palmer Curriculum Vitae NB: Opens a new page (requires Acrobat Reader)
