Jim Conway, harmonica player, composer and music producer, began his career with the frenetic jug outfit, the Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, in the 1970s. Captain Matchbox was fronted by Conway’s brother, Mic (later the founder of Circus Oz). Jim played harmonica and kazoo and sang with the band on releases such as the definitive album Wangaratta Wahine (1974). The siblings played together in the Conway Brothers’ Hiccups Band from 1984 to 1988. That year Jim joined the Backsliders, who toured Australia for many years and released a number of critically–acclaimed albums. In 2006 he left the Backsliders to focus on Jim Conway’s Big Wheel. Director of the Balmain Acoustica music festival since 2005, Conway is also a session musician in demand, working across blues, jazz and country styles. He has composed, produced and recorded music for many film and radio projects; a documentary about his music and his life with multiple sclerosis was made in 1999.
Artist Greg Warburton has worked for many years for organisations assisting people with disabilities. Symptoms of multiple sclerosis often worsen in hot weather, and sitting in Warburton’s hot studio, Conway closed his eyes, as he often does while performing.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2009
Donated through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program
© Greg Warburton
Jim Conway, 2006 by Greg Warburton is composed of synthetic polymer paint and charcoal on paper, laid on board. It is large; 139 centimetres high by 109 centimetres in its frame. Conway’s head and neck is enlarged over four times human scale. He is a pale-skinned man with dark hair and eyes closed in reverie. The background is pale peach. Shading moulds the contours of his face.
Jim’s dark hair is short on the sides and longer on top, the longer strands are tousled and some fall across the middle of his forehead. His sideburns are tinged with grey. His receding hairline reveals a high forehead that is lightly wrinkled.
He wears rimless spectacles over closed eyes. The upper edges of the glasses cut through his eyebrows. The near horizontal metal arms of the glasses focus our attention on the shadows around his eyes at the bridge of his nose and on the faint wrinkles which spread from their outer corners.
Light shines on Jim’s face from either side as if stage lit, so that a shadow plays along the mid-line central profile of his face. The light emphasizes his high cheekbones and soft pillowy cheeks and burnishes the lower edge of his nose, which has deep furrows either side. Narrow lips have a hint of a smile at the edges. He has a square jaw and dimpled chin.
White brushstrokes and soft greys indicate the neck and shoulder line.
Audio description script written by Krysia Kitch and voiced by Kate Matthews
Greg Warburton (2 portraits)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Penelope Grist spends some quality time with the Portrait Gallery’s summer collection exhibition, Eye to Eye.
Anne Sanders and Christopher Chapman bring passionate characterisation to Express Yourself, the Portrait Gallery collection exhibition celebrating iconoclastic Australians.
