This year, we have one of our own immortalised in the Archibald Prize: surfer, artist and environmentalist Ric Friar. In 2010, stencil artist Regan Tamanui painted Occy for the Archibald. Of his subject, Tamanui said, “I imagined him to be a mythological hero of the people, kind of like a funny or happy-go-lucky demigod.” Upon entering the Archibald prize an artist must choose a subject distinguished in a particular field. There’s no doubt that Occy is a national surfing icon. But this year, artist Terry Matthews has chosen to paint a lesser-known figure of the surfing world. So how do artists choose their subjects for Australia’s most prestigious portraiture prize? I spoke to Matthews about his decision to paint Friar, as well as to the man himself, to find out a little more about his adventure-filled life; or what he calls, the ‘phenominality’.
Ric with Terry Matthews, the artist who painted his portrait.
Although the painting did not make the final selection for the Archibald Prize exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, it remains a portrait, and a subject, worth discussing. Ric Friar is perhaps best known to the surfing world for his pioneering big wave session at the Cribbar in Newquay, UK in 1966, being one of three men to challenge the previously un-ridden peak during an historically big swell. But he has also been a lively voice in sustainability and peace activism for many years.
Born in 1943, dyslexic and left handed, Ric Friar had a difficult time at school and dropped out almost immediately. “Ric is such an original thinker”, his partner Wendy suggests, “because he never went to school, and henceforth, was never ‘un-taught’ how to be imaginative.” It’s an interesting idea, and when speaking to Friar, it’s obvious he is on an alternative wavelength. A linear thinker he most certainly is not, and whether this is due to the way he grew up and experienced the world, or to those other experimental pursuits that characterised the swinging sixties, it’s hard to say. Regardless, there is a magic to Ric Friar’s being that lends itself to the canvas, and this is what Terry Matthews saw when he met Friar earlier this year. Perhaps a truly colourful character is all an artist really needs to inspire a good portrait. Both Matthews and Friar believe in synchronicity in life, when the stars align magical things happen, they reckon, and their meeting was no coincidence.
Friar’s life has been one boisterous adventure after another. He went to jail for petty theft at the age of 17; has had a number of near death experiences; trained an Olympic downhill ski team; had a brief love affair with the 70’s supermodel Twiggy; pioneered the commercial production of hemp in Australia and was coined ‘The King of Poo’ by the Australian media for his role in supplying city farmers with horse manure for use as fertilizer (which was difficult to come by for urban growers at the time). He was in England in 1967 – the summer of love – and dubs one particular Beetles record the soundtrack of that time. From what I can gather, he sure as hell jumped onboard that Magical Mystery Tour and didn’t look back. “No one knows they are witness to a revolution,” he says, “until after it’s happened.”
But perhaps the most influential aspect of Friar’s life has been the surf, and he takes what he’s learned in the water into everything he does. “It is that ‘in the momentness’ that surfers practice on every wave,” he tells me, “that I have lived my whole life by.” And perhaps this is a message for us all. This spontaneity and lust for life comes through in Matthews’ portrait. Wendy sees the painting as Ric’s experience weathered over time, “it’s obvious that he is someone who’s been out experiencing the physical world and he wears that on his face.” There is something warrior-esque in the way Friar holds himself in this painting: a man who has taken on the world without restraint or inhibition. The colours have an electric quality, capturing that charge that marks his personality. For Friar himself, the painting has meant an exercise in remembering, in remembering all that has lead up to how he looks now; who he is and how he became that person.
Friar’s life has no doubt been extraordinary in many ways, but I think it is the man himself who is the ‘phenominality.’ A mind like this is a rare find. Friar said throughout our conversation that he might be a little mad, that he is somewhat “out of order.” But there’s a certain kind of beauty in disorder. This got me to thinking of my favourite quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland, so in honour of unbounded imagination, of freethinking and of living in the moment I’ll leave you with this small wisdom…
Mad Hatter: “Have I gone mad?”
Alice Kinglsey: “I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret. All the best people are.”
