“The purpose of drawing is to make freshness permanent. Out of billions of seconds of futility, occasionally, sparks of the life force are immutably held forever.” Brett Whiteley wrote these lines in his 1985 notebook about the activity at the very heart of his life as an artist, drawing. For three decades Whiteley bewitched his audience with his mercurial character and unconventional behaviour, producing original and challenging works such as ‘The American Dream’ and ‘Alchemy’. He was an indefatigable draughtsman, putting great energy into his drawings, which stand alone as a vital part of his oeuvre. In his finest drawings he concentrated all his talents to produce incandescent moments of vision. Nowhere is he more pure than in his remarkable drawings. In these we find the essence of Brett Whiteley.” From the foreward ‘Brett Whiteley: Drawings’ by Lou Klepac, 2014