James Clifford (artist)

James Clifford was born in Muswellbrook, New South Wales in 1936 and in the sixties moved to Sydney, where he studied with Desiderius Orban and exhibited at Watters Gallery.

The novelist Patrick White, famously associated with painters Ian Fairweather, Sidney Nolan, Brett Whiteley and Chris O'Doherty, was collecting Clifford's work from the mid-sixties until the mid-eighties.

Clifford, Chris O'Doherty, Brett Whiteley, and the painter / set designer Desmond Digby were the four young artists collected most avidly by White, and he bequeathed the works to the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Clifford received favourable mention from a small number of notable art critics: Bernard Smith, James Gleeson, Elwyn Lynn and Gary Catalano.

... "His Cinematic Landscapes are a rapid series of takes: close-up shots mingle with distant vistas – there you see nothing but sky – and there was a forceful view of the ground.

Yet how spendidly had that paint been placed; one could discern white top waves breaking, sanded beaches, cliff faces, whole headlands with rolling hills beyond and turbulent water, not just breakers".