Angel Street (Adam Cullen)

Adam Cullen (1965–2012), painter, studied art in Sydney from 1986 to 1999, when he obtained his master’s degree in fine arts from the University of New South Wales. He held his first solo exhibition in 1993, and exhibited annually from then until his death at home in Angel Street, Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains. Commonly working in house paints, he specialised in repulsively and brutally amusing depictions of bestial men, flabby, bleeding women and dismembered animals, managing simultaneously to appear to sneer at, and identify unflinchingly with, the condition of existence.

Like Cullen, Darren McDonald has often painted animals, but his own style emphasises the vulnerability of the ‘sitter’. McDonald met Cullen through art collector Peter Fay and asked if he could paint his portrait but found it difficult to organise due to Cullen’s health and state of mind. 'I always thought of Adam as reserved, shy and, when sober, a gentleman. In the studio I had a photo of the artist Jackson Pollock that I was keeping for reference but it somehow became the base for the portrait of Adam. Somehow it worked. I imagine they might have had a few things in common.'

Purchased 2012
© Darren McDonald