Adam Cullen lived life at 'full volume'

30 Jul 2012, 11:24 am   -   Source: AAP
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The Archibald-winning painter, based in the Blue Mountains, died in his sleep on Sunday after a long period of poor health. He was 47. (AAP)

The Archibald-winning painter, based in the Blue Mountains, died in his sleep on Sunday after a long period of poor health. He was 47. (AAP)

A friend of Archibald-winning painter Adam Cullen says the late artist lived life at 'full volume' despite suffering from ill health for a long time.

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Adam Cullen was able to strip away the veneer of niceness and hold a fractured lens to Australian society, a senior art curator says.

The Archibald-winning painter, based in the Blue Mountains, died in his sleep on Sunday after a long period of poor health. He was 47.

Wayne Tunnicliffe, the head curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of NSW, has known Cullen since the mid 1990s and worked on numerous shows with him.

On Monday Tunnicliffe said his friend would be remembered for his "relentlessly Australian subject matter" and his highly satirical eye.

"He really held up a fractured lens to Australian society," he told AAP.

"He stripped back the cover of niceness ... and looked at what lay underneath with a sharp satirical eye."

Mr Tunnicliffe said Cullen shook up the Archibald competition at a time when it had become safe and conservative, paving the way for a whole generation of younger, more experimental entries.

Cullen was rewarding to work with, Mr Tunnicliffe said, and while he liked to provoke he was "straight forward" as a person.

But his bad-boy image was also the real deal.

"He lived quite an extreme life ... the extremity of his practice wasn't a put-on, he lived the life he depicted.

"The fractured men in his paintings are as much a self-portrait as they were depictions of what was wrong in society."

Friend Charles Waterstreet, a barrister, said Cullen often worried about dying but still lived life "at full volume".

"It's a wonder he survived for so long but he was working up until the very end," Mr Waterstreet told ABC Radio on Monday.

Cullen won the 2000 Archibald prize for his portrait of actor David Wenham.

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