“I admire Picasso,” said Palmer, as he prepared for his 20th solo exhibition, which includes an oil painting entitled Interior with Mt Tibrogargin (apologies to Dora Maar), Picasso’s long-time mistress. Picasso was the most brilliant innovator, creative, a wonderful painter, a sculptor and he could draw.”

In the 1960s, as an art student in his 20s, Palmer attended Jon Molvig’s life classes on Petrie Terrace in Brisbane “for two or three shillings and a bottle of wine”. “Jon was instrumental in teaching me the difference between visual representation and interpretative drawing, where you express the way you feel.”

Palmer was also taught art by, then taught art alongside, Archibald Prize winner, William Robinson, at QUT (previously QIT) in the 1980s. And during his 24 years as an art lecturer there, Warren’s students included Matthew Tobin, one of the Tobin twins of Urban Art Projects’ fame.

“Painting is illusion,” says Palmer, whose drawing started out as representational. His persona has developed and evolved over 30 years, and in later years distortion has become integral to his artistic signature, both in his paintings and sculpture. “Now I can’t help it,” he says of the figures in his oil paintings that sport disproportionately large heads, big hands and small bodies.

“The difficulty is getting the exaggeration right, like a cartoonist who distorts but retains the intent. And like Picasso or Brett Whiteley, who exaggerate an arm or a torso, but it still feels right,” explained the artist. “These aren’t bad drawings, but the implication is that you can’t draw. “It takes a long time to get your own imagery which is unique. “I had to find my own alphabet and that had to do with fairly large heads that are out of proportion to the body – it’s done purposefully. And it still has to have aesthetic quality and originality. “It took me a long time to get things to work together in proportion and yet be totally out of proportion. That’s the seduction of the work.

”Palmer uses ordinary, common, everyday objects that he literally “picks up” (see Article South East Advertiser Sept 2009) – perhaps from the street while walking with his dog, Kara, who watches over him as he works, or something that catches his eye at a fete. This includes a timber base from his grandmother’s aspidistra stand, plastic ducklings from Crazy Clark’s, a pearl necklace, and a Datsun insignia.

“I pick up a lot of stuff – it’s good for the ecology.” He takes these found objects out of context and makes them into “something precious”, mixing together bits of plastic, broken china, nails and bottle tops. “I stick these things together with a bit of glue - that’s reality. The challenge is to make something ordinary beautiful.” He achieves this effect with gold lustre, faux bronze, or an aluminium patina, that makes his work look as if it has been caste.

“But it’s just paint – that’s part of the illusion. The illusion is what I’m very interested in,” explains the artist. “The paradox of life – what’s this all about?”His oils are narrative, often tongue-in-cheek portrayals of relationships and the game of life, as observed and experienced by Warren Palmer. There’s a lot of symbolism, with the figures often accompanied by fish, which he uses as a symbol of sex, or frogs, birds and cats.

The Queensland Art Gallery has collected Palmer’s work over 20 years with four pieces purchased between 1976 and 1995, showing the artist’s ongoing development over the period.

Palmer also has to his credit the “Archibald for ceramicists” - the Gold Coast Ceramic Award - which he won in 1985, the year it was judged by internationally-renowned ceramicist, Graham Oldroyd.