Wendy Paramor (12 December 1938 – 28 November 1975) was a mid-20th Century Australian artist. In 2014, the Paramor Prize was created by the

Liverpool Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough in Merseyside, England. With a population of in 2019, it is the 10th largest English district by population and its metropolitan area is the fifth largest in the United Kingdom, with a popul ...

City Council.

Early life and education

Paramor was born in

Melbourne Melbourne ( ; Boonwurrung/Woiwurrung: ''Narrm'' or ''Naarm'') is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria, and the second-most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Its name generally refers to a met ...

Victoria, on 12 December 1938. After leaving school at the age of 15, she completed a secretarial course at her father's insistence before studying art at the

East Sydney Technical College The National Art School (NAS) is a tertiary level art school, located in , an inner-city suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The school is an independent accredited higher education provider offering specialised study in studio arts p ...

and

Julian Ashton Art School The Julian Ashton Art School was established by Julian Ashton in 1890 as the "Academy Julian", (perhaps a reference to the Académie Julian in Paris) has been an influential art school in Australia. For a long time it was known as the Sydney Art ...

Career

Between 1960 and 1963, she lived in Europe, traveling and exhibiting work in

Lisbon Lisbon (; pt, Lisboa ) is the capital and largest city of Portugal, with an estimated population of 544,851 within its administrative limits in an area of 100.05 km2. Grande Lisboa, Lisbon's urban area extends beyond the city's administr ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. While in Portugal, Paramor had solo exhibitions for three months on a grant from the

Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation ( pt, Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian), commonly referred to simply as the Gulbenkian Foundation, is a Portuguese institution dedicated to the promotion of the arts, philanthropy, science, and education. One of ...

in Lisbon,

Coimbra Coimbra (, also , , or ) is a city and a municipality in Portugal. The population of the municipality at the 2011 census was 143,397, in an area of . The fourth-largest urban area in Portugal after Lisbon, Porto Metropolitan Area, Porto, and Bra ...

, and

Oporto Porto or Oporto () is the second-largest city in Portugal, the capital of the Porto District, and one of the Iberian Peninsula's major urban areas. Porto city proper, which is the entire municipality of Porto, is small compared to its metropol ...

. On her return to Sydney in 1963, she lived in a modest terrace house in Waterloo and exhibited in group shows with the Contemporary Art Society of Australia (Victoria and New South Wales), and at the Dominion, Barry Stern and Blaxland galleries in Sydney. In 1965 she held critically-acclaimed solo exhibitions at

Watters Gallery Watters Gallery (1964–2018) was a private art gallery in Riley Street Sydney, Australia, run by Frank Watters (1934 – May 2020) with his business partners and friends Geoffrey and Alex Legge. It was influential and well-known, hosting exhibit ...

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

, and Bognar Gallery in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

. In 1966 she moved to a property in

West Hoxton, New South Wales West Hoxton is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. West Hoxton is located 40 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Liverpool and is part of the Greater We ...

, where she built a

Philip Cox Philip Sutton Cox (born 1 October 1939) is an Australian architect. Cox is the founding partner of Cox Architecture, one of the largest architectural practices in Australia. He commenced his first practice with Ian McKay in 1962, and ...

-designed underground house. From 1966 to 1970 she exhibited with the Central Street Gallery in Sydney, which confirmed her decisive move from landscape-based work to "hard edge," geometric abstraction. During this time she successfully expanded her practice into sculpture, and two of her sculptures and a painting were included in the seminal exhibition, 'The Field', which opened the

National Gallery of Victoria The National Gallery of Victoria, popularly known as the NGV, is an art museum in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is Australia's oldest and most visited art museum. The NGV houses an encyclopedic art collection across two ...

's new building in 1968. After being diagnosed with a brain tumour, she returned to figurative and semi-figurative work (landscapes, portraiture), and made plans for a large-scale metal sculpture exhibition.

Recognition

In 2014, the ''Paramor prize'' was created by the

(Australia) City Council.

Personal life

In October 1967, her son Luke was born. She never married his father, Vernon Treweeke, who was also painter. In 1973, at the age of 34, Paramor was diagnosed with a

brain tumour A brain tumor occurs when abnormal cells form within the brain. There are two main types of tumors: malignant tumors and benign (non-cancerous) tumors. These can be further classified as primary tumors, which start within the brain, and secondary ...

. She died on 28 November 1975 at the Wolper Jewish Hospital in

Woollahra Woollahra is a suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Woollahra is located 5 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the Municipality of Woollahra. W ...

, Sydney, New South Wales.

References

External links

images of Paramor works
from the Charles Nodrum Gallery {{DEFAULTSORT:Paramor, Wendy 1938 births 1975 deaths Australian women painters Julian Ashton Art School alumni 20th-century Australian women artists 20th-century Australian artists