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'I haven't got a style, or at least I hope not', Ian Fairweather said to a visitor, in 1968. And he may have been right; he had succeeded. Among Fairweather's notable qualities was his ability to pass through the various 'isms' of world art - post-impressionism, cubism, futurism - picking up along the way bits of Chinese calligraphy and Aboriginal bark painting, while at the same time producing something that was recognisably his and his alone. It came from his instinct for abstraction while never quite being able to resist the figure. The abstract qualities of Kite flying, 1958, are broken by the presence of one or two upturned faces. It became Fairweather's 'style', or at least something he could investigate. Although those contradictory instincts for abstraction/figure were well established by the late 1950s, the grey paintings on newspaper which arrived at Macquarie Galleries late in 1959, followed by larger works on cardboard, and exhibited in his 1960 exhibition, were so unexpectedly abstract and so completely strange that even his most earnest admirers were taken aback.

This is the introduction to an extract of Murray Bail's Fairweather, published by Murdoch Books. You can read the full extract in Art & Australia's Autumn 2009 issue.