Design

‘WORKER, CRAFTSPERSON, ARTIST’.
MIMMO COZZOLINO REMEMBERS NEIL CURTIS (1950-2006)*

At the back of The Memory Book (Allen & Unwin, 2005) Neil Curtis writes: ‘(I) Think of myself as a worker first, craftsperson second and artist last’. I can vouch for that: Neil had a ferocious work ethic. He was very fussy about the way he crafted his images, and his unique imagination and caustic wit produced an artistic output that will be appreciated for years to come.

I feel very privileged to have known him professionally, especially from 1975 to 1988, when we did most of our work together. Then our careers took different paths until 2005 when we got together again to plan the All Australian Graffiti (AAG) retrospective ‘We’re a Weird Mob’ at Post Master Gallery.

The retrospective was to exhibit the best of what AAG, of which Neil had been an integral member, had created over its three year lifespan in the mid-seventies in Melbourne. The curator, Elizabeth Gertsakis, also wanted to show the best of what we had accomplished individually since leaving AAG. It was during the planning of the show that Neil discovered he had cancer.

When I asked Neil what new work he wanted to include in the show he started telling me about The Memory Book. He was very excited about it. I was moved when I read it. It’s a very personal book– Neil at his most visually poetic, reflective and inventive self. For me, it also shed some light on Neil, the very private human being.

Back in 1975 Con Aslanis, Izi Marmur, Geoff Cook and I started the illustration and design studio ‘All Australian Graffiti’ with the express aim of shaking things up. Our clients were mainly the newer, smaller, more adventurous ‘boutique’ ad agencies that sprung up in the early 70s in Melbourne and Sydney. Gordon Trembath and Lionel Hunt at the Palace loved us as did Begg Dow Priday, Strawbridge Emery, and SPASM. After Tony Ward joined us in early 1976 I was still keen to add other, talented illustrators to the studio. I had heard about Neil’s wacky illustration talents from Meg Williams who herself joined in 1977.

After many visits to Neil’s cottage in Templestowe, I finally managed to coax him into joining us. Soon after art school he had started a studio called ‘Boots and All’ with Dennis Veal and Hugh Edwards, but he jumped ship and joined AAG. He soon settled in and made an enormous contribution to AAG’s character and creative output.

Neil was happiest when he had a challenging job on his board, a firm deadline, a freshly made cup of tea on his desk and a rollie on his lips. He used to come to work every day carrying a Gladstone bag, a symbol of his English working class background of which he was very proud. It was the first time Neil had worked full time as a commercial artist and the first time he was earning a regular, modest living from his illustration. He had come with a bit of a reputation for being difficult to work with. He was often highly strung and the smallest thing could make him snap. Yet, as long as I could keep him focused on the work, he was good fun to have around and a definite boost to the studio’s morale.

In 1977 I asked Rennie Ellis to pen a promotional piece about All Australian Graffiti, and this is part of what he wrote about Neil:
‘In 1973 Neil Curtis… won the Art Directors’ Club gold medal for Melbourne’s Student of the Year. The award’s committee, made up of some of Australia’s best advertising art directors and graphic designers, … made the comment that while Neil’s work was superbly innovative, it was also so idiosyncratic as to make him virtually unemployable. [They said] His commercial potential was dubious… “I just wanted to draw pictures”, Neil remembers. “I saw my kind of illustration as a bridge between fine art and design.”
[Neil’s] forthright manner, his penchant for story telling and his eccentric but warmly realized illustrations have found their niche at All Australian Graffiti and he is now trying to adjust to the idea of his work being accepted’.

From the start of when I got to know Neil in the mid 1970s, he was working on ideas for books. He loved books, was obsessed by them. Besides being an avid reader, he desperately wanted to get one of his own in print. The first time I met him he showed me a book about a bicycle-riding crocodile. He had hawked the artwork for The Crocodile Book to publishers for a while, but without success. Such was his disenchantment with the response that I couldn’t get him to revive the book later on and I never saw the artwork again. For me, Neil’s work from this time had a rawness with tremendous charm and appeal. Alas, it was too radical for mainstream publishers.

Next, he incubated The Chook Book – it was to be a visual encyclopedia of the fowl kingdom. That didn’t get off the ground either. Then things started moving for Neil with the publication of The Kevin Pappas Tear Out Postcard Book (Penguin, 1977). Whilst this was an AAG cooperative effort, Neil came up with five of the 28 postcards in what became an Australian bestseller for that year.

Then Neil unleashed Bear Dinkum (Boobook, 1980). Not since The Magic Pudding had koalas been drawn with quite the same gutsy gusto. In 1983 kangaroos got the treatment with the launch of The Roo Book (Penguin). In 1991 there was a sequel to Bear Dinkum titled Bear Dinkum Drops His Guts (Penguin).

And all the while we were working on the Avanti series of Italian language text books (CIS Educational, 1982-1988), later to win awards and break sales records; a monster of a job that Neil loved to hate but which he was quite proud of. As he kept telling people, it was the most commercially successful series of books he was ever associated with. That financial success meant a lot to him.
As a friend who saw Neil develop his art over the years, I find his black and white drawings rich and beautifully crafted and a continual source of inspiration. He was the only illustrator I know of who actually sculpted with the rapidograph, a bastard of a tool at the best of times! Sometimes Neil used to get pretty tense when he was drawing. There was a period when he started coming out in an inexplicable rash on his hands. In the middle of the second series of Avanti books he got RSI in his right hand. A specialist told him to stop drawing completely for a couple of months and, on resumption, not to use a rapidograph. Neil was devastated by this setback but, after a couple of months’ rest, his hand did get well enough for him to start drawing again with a small, soft brush.

Apart from his formidable drawing skills, Neil had a talent for writing. The Roo Book got its impetus from word play and puns. He wrote the two Bear Dinkum books and The Memory Book. There were also thousands of personalized, one-off, hand-drawn postcards for family, friends and work mates, which he wrote and drew over his lifetime. Drawing was not just his livelihood, it was also his entertainment and a means of connecting with friends. His 2006 show at ZOO Design+Fine Art featured some of the hundreds of hand-drawn cards he had sent Dona McAdams – his photographer friend in New York – over some twenty years.

Neil’s last few projects were among his best – Cat and Fish and Cat and Fish go to See, both written by Joan Grant. Cat and Fish won the 2004 Children’s Book Council of Australia Picture Book of the Year Award. He just kept getting better with time. If all art is a portrait of the artist, Neil leaves us with a picture of a complex, funny, intensely observant and truly original mind. It’s a loss to us all that he went so early.

*This tribute first appeared in Illustrators Australia 10, Illustrators Australia, Melbourne, 2007, p.7-10.


From: THE KEVIN PAPPAS TEAR-OUT POSTCARD BOOK AND ALL AUSTRALIAN GRAFFITI. (UNATTRIBUTED PRESS RELEASE WRITTEN BY RENNIE ELLIS, 1977).

In 1973 NEIL CURTIS, then a final year art student at Preston Institute of Technology, won the Art Directors’ Club gold medallion for Melbourne’s Student of the Year. The award’s committee, made up of some of Australia’s best advertising art directors and graphic designers, also made the comment that while Neil’s work was superbly innovative, it was also so idiosyncratic as to make him virtually unemployable. His commercial potential was dubious, they said. “I just wanted to draw pictures”, Neil remembers. “I saw my kind of illustration as a bridge between fine art and design”. The lean years after art school saw Neil find acceptance for his work in the underground press but the more conventional agencies shied away from him.

While the decision not to compromise his style kept him poor in the beginning, it’s now starting to pay off as a number of adventurous agencies are harnessing his peculiar brand of creativity. His forthright manner, his penchant for story telling and his eccentric but warmly realised illustrations have found their niche at All Australian Graffiti and he is now trying to adjust to the idea of his work being accepted.