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Greg Allen

The simple painted impression – when done well nothing much is more pleasing to my eye. Here, brush marks are respected, both for their potential and execution and a good impression will have them dancing and scything – cut sharp and clean- with deliberate economy across the canvas or paper. What a simple, yet elusive pleasure it is!

Greg Allen has earned the reputation as one of Australia’s foremost watercolour artists. He is also a remarkable teacher who can analyse and explain the features of composition and technique which contribute to excellence.

Armed with a passion to draw and blessed with creative parents – his father was a noted architect – Greg Allen began to develop a precocious understanding of design and materials, and the stuff of art, in his teenage years. Allen was born in Australia in 1958 and studied at the Caulfield Institute of Technology in Melbourne. He established himself as a professional artist when he was 23 and had his first solo exhibition that same year.

In 1982 he was awarded the prestigious Camberwell Rotary Travel Scholarship for five months of study and travel in Europe. In 1990 he studied pastel painting under Daniel Greene in New York. In 1991 he won the Alice Bale Watercolor Prize. He has won the Camberwell Rotary Watercolor Prize twice, in 1990 and 2000, and has 24 other major First Prizes and Best of Show Awards for watercolor. Greg is a much sought after tutor and has been a guest lecturer at Melbourne University.