William Robinson's art studio in his Brisbane home has been mostly dormant since the death of his wife Shirley earlier this year.
"You still get up in the morning and you intend to paint. It's just that sometimes I scribble — but I haven't got to the paint yet," he told 730.
But the internationally celebrated artist and his family have agreed to mark this period of mourning with a special exhibition dedicated to Shirley Robinson.
"I'm so pleased that we've had this very special homage to Shirley at this time, not down the track," says family friend Dame Quentin Bryce.
"It was a spontaneous, wonderful idea."
Love in Life and Art
The exhibition, Love in Life and Art, opened at QUT's William Robinson gallery earlier this month, and features many works never shown in public before.
"Shirley was a deeply private person, but she also understood that Bill's art is for the public," explains exhibition curator Vanessa Van Ooyen.
"And while she never sat as a subject for Bill ever, her figure is throughout his work."
Shirley appears in some of Mr Robinson's earliest still-life paintings, and she moves to centre stage during the artist's farmyard period in the early 1980s.
Mr Robinson admits the farm they ran was chaotic, and he wasn't a very good farmer.
"I was making the disorder most of the time and she was able to pull it all together and make it liveable," he said.
"She (Shirley) was the person with order in her mind, and I was a sort of a hobo wanderer around all this, helping out where I could.
"I should have been told off all the time for all of this, but no, she was extremely generous in her understanding."
'Comfort in the eternal existence of nature'
The couple's lives were devastated in the early 90s with the loss of two children.
"What that does to you, I don't know, but what it doesn't do is turn you into a mystic," Mr Robinson said.
"It turns you into somebody who comforts and holds onto your friend and partner as it were."
In the 1990s, the artist began focusing more on grand landscapes.
"Because of what happened to our lives, I was able to gain some comfort in the eternal existence of nature," he said.
Love in Life and Art is a not sombre memorial, but rather a celebration says exhibition curator Vanessa Van Ooyen.
"How he has depicted Shirley is always with humour and imagination … she's caught in dance quite often."
In real life, Ms Van Ooyen says Shirley Robinson was highly practical.
"Shirley was the competent one, and she managed Bill. I used to jokingly say we all needed a Shirley."
Dame Quentin said Shirley Robinson enjoyed staying out of the limelight.
"She was reserved, self-effacing, gentle, forthright."
As to what she would have made about all the fuss, Mr Robinson is unsure.
"She was a very private person you see, if there was ever an opening, I can never find her.
"She didn't have a red hat on, someone that I could recognise here, she would just disappear out of sight — I would be left to explain my pictures."
'Pick up ready to paint again'
While he's not painting at the moment, Mr Robinson is still playing the piano.
"It's as though I'm playing it to Shirley, not for her or as a memory of her or anything like that. I'm just playing it for her," he says.
"I was probably with the fairies for a considerable amount of time and now you crawl out of this and realise you're not living in a cave, you've got to communicate with everybody.
"But you've got to pick up ready to paint again."
And when he does pick up the paintbrush again, Mr Robinson says he will continue to celebrate life.
"I don't think you would find a picture of mine that is about devastation as though the worst things in the world have happened to me and must portray these as a psychological explanation, because the atmosphere of the times is quite often today seemingly about that.
"I don't paint for any particular time — I just painted for the life we were passing through."
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