Noel Wood

Wood was born in 1912 in Strathalbyn, South Australia.[1] He was the fourth son of Rev. Tom Percy Wood and Fannie (née Newbury).[2] His eldest brother, Rex Wood (1906–1970) was also a noted artist. His grandfather, Thomas Percy Wood (1855–1937) was an accomplished watercolourist.[2] He attended Art School in Adelaide where his tutor was Marie Tuck.[2]

Wood met Eleanor Weld Skipper, whom he married in 1933, at Art School in Adelaide.[2] They lived and painted on Kangaroo Island, residing in the house of Noel's brother, Dean, for two years.[2] Seeking a place where Wood could paint without paying rent,[4] they purchased 15 acres on Bedarra Island, North Queensland[1][5] and made a grass shack in which to live before building a home they called the "House of Singing Bamboo".[5] Wood called the island a place "with a warm climate, where one could live for approximately nothing and solve one’s own problems in paint and colour".[6] He and his wife had two daughters, Virginia Maray and Ann Grocott.

Wood became a sensation in Sydney early in his career, following a January 1939 exhibition of 50 paintings at the David Jones Gallery. The media began to refer to Wood as "Artist Crusoe"[5] and the "Robinson Crusoe of Art".[7][8]

Soon after World War II, Wood packaged fifty of his best paintings to exhibit in London at Leicester Galleries. The exhibition was to be opened by the British painter, Augustus John. The crate of works was despatched on Queensland Rail but went missing en route and never reached Sydney, where Wood awaited them. It was never found. While bitterly disappointed, Wood took ship to London in 1947, and he painted in England, Ireland, France and Italy, paving his way by producing portraits, until returning to Bedarra after several months in Europe.[5][9]

In the 1950s, he was invited to the United States where he worked as an assistant art director in Hollywood.

Wood ultimately spent 60 years painting on Bedarra Island.[7] In 1987 he was the subject of the documentary The Island and the Painter produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.[5][10]

• Art Gallery of South Australia[3]
• Cairns Art Gallery[11]
• Heide Museum of Modern Art[12]
• Queensland Art Gallery[13]
• New England Regional Art Museum.[14]

Noel Wood died in Tully, North Queensland, in 2001 at the age of 89.[3]

• "A Big Country" Stories of Australia and its people from the ABC TV series by Jim Downes. Pub. Angus and Robertson 1988. ISBN 0-207-15896-7. See "No Place For a Hermit" pp. 105–111.
• "International Islands Magazine" Vol.3/No.5, November/December 1983. See "ON THE ROAD TO MEHETIA" PART 2. by Michael Fessier.
• "Howard Hinton, Patron of Art", Angus & Robertson, Halstead Press, Sydney N.S.W. Australia. 1951.
• "Summer Comes to Bedarra" The Advertiser, Adelaide. Sat. 13 November 1937
• "Artist Lives on Lonely Island" Pix Magazine 4 March 1939, Page 36
• "Beachcombers Escape to Paradise" The Australian, 17 February 2014, Arts 13
• Royal South Australian Society of Arts History 1855 – 2016, Vol 2 – Noel Wood
• "The Man Who Was An Island" Weekend Fin, Australian Financial Review, 6–7 May 2017, Pages 34/35