If you checked out the Archibald prize finalists back in 1983, one painting in particular might have caught your eye. Taking up seven feet of wall space, Dr Brown and Green Old Time Waltz is a psychedelic portrait of Bob Brown, rendered in rich colours and filled with hidden details: from faces smuggled into the trees to little green men walking around Brown’s feet.
But just as noteworthy as the painting was the man standing next to it. Clad in hand-painted clothes, with painted false teeth in his mouth and a walking stick he didn’t really need in his hand, stood Harold “the Kangaroo” Thornton, the artist and self-described “greatest genius that ever lived”.
