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Anh Do back on the box with Barnesy, Magda and Kyle Sandilands

Great Lakes Advocate

23/04/17

Anh Do has consistently appeared on lists of Australia’s most loved celebrities in the past few years while Kyle Sandilands has consistently appeared on lists of Australia’s most hated. The Vietnamese-born Australian comedian is adored for his stand-up comedy, TV appearances, and memoir The Happiest Refugee while Sandilands barely goes a week without some scandal on his top-rating radio show.

But that didn’t stop Do inviting the broadcaster onto his new ABC TV show Anh’s Brush With Fame in which Do interviews and paints the portraits of remarkable Australians.

“I don’t know where they do those ‘most-loved’ polls, but I’m not even the fifth-most loved person in my family,” Do says. “You’ve got to take all that stuff with a grain of salt.”

Do picked an eclectic bunch of guests for whom he either had great admiration or  fascination. The full line-up is: Amanda Keller, Jimmy Barnes, Magda Szubanski, Craig McLachlan, Anthony Mundine, Kyle Sandilands, Kate Ceberano and Dr Charlie Teo.

“A guy like Kyle is a lot of things, but he’s never boring,” Do says.

Do was most interested to hear about Sandilands’ experiences growing up including the period in which the now super-rich radio host was homeless and living on the streets of Brisbane.

“He used to sleep behind a service station, and at night he’d listen to the radio that was coming through the bowsers. The voices of those radio announcers became his human company and that’s when he fell in love with radio.”

Do spent between two and four hours in the studio with each of the guests, painting their portraits while chatting and uncovering the experiences which made them the people they are today.

He uncovered some intriguing titbits: from an untold story of Barnes’s long-last daughter — which didn’t even make the final cut because, as Do says, you could do an entire series on Barnesy’s life — to Szubanski’s revelations about how her relationship with her father affects her life.

Do read Szubanski’s memoir, Reckoning, last year and decided immediately that she was his first priority as a guest. Not only is Szubanski — an Australian comedian who broke the mould — a personal hero to Do but they share similar experiences of fathers who were a part of violent and dangerous wars.

In addition to the interviews Anh’s Brush with Fame is very much a series about Do’s portraiture and his work in capturing the essence of these personalities.

In 2014 Do surprised Australia when his striking portrait of his father became a finalist for the Archibald Prize. Few of Do’s fans knew he had artistic talent though painting had long been one of his passions.

“Six years ago, a good mate of mine passed away at the age of 50, quite quickly. And it shocked me and made me think about all these things I want to do when I retire, like painting. And I thought: ‘If I put it off until when I retire, what if I don’t get there?’ ”

Do enrolled in a painting course at TAFE — where an 18-year-old fellow students asked if he was in fact that Anh Do, then refused to believe he was — and learnt valuable technical skills.

He’s painted many friends and family members, using cake spatulas to apply huge, dramatic smears to the canvas. Do says he usually chats with his subjects as he goes so it made sense to bring together interviews and painting.

“I paint really fast. I’ve just got a short attention span, and even if somebody said: ‘You’ve got five months’ I’d still probably finish a painting in a couple of hours because I don’t know how to paint slow.

“I grew up with old Chinese paintings on the walls at home, and the old Chinese or oriental masters, they would capture a boy sitting on a buffalo in a minimum amount of strokes. That’s not exactly what I’m going for, but I think that had an influence on how I wanted to paint.”

Do doesn’t allow his guests to see the progress of the painting until it’s absolutely finished so there’s a big reveal at the end of each half-hour episode.

But what did the famously forthright Sandilands think of his painting?

“I was worried what every guest would think, but with Kyle at least I know he’ll probably tell me what he really thinks,” Do says. “But you’ve got to watch it to find out. Telling you would be like giving away the price of the antiques on Antiques Roadshow.”

Artist, Anh Do has donated his work, Without my make-up to the Manning Regional Art Gallery

Great Lakes Advocate

As custodians of the Manning Regional Art Gallery Collection, the MidCoast community is now the proud owner of Anh Do’s stunning Without my make up portrait, which was a finalist in last year’s Manning Art Prize exhibition.

The work now becomes part of a collection of almost 320 artworks, housed in the Manning Regional Art Gallery and in MidCoast Council chambers.

“It’s a fantastic cultural asset for the MidCoast community, and one of only around 30 regional public collections across the State,” community spaces and services director Paul De Szell said.

“The donation was made possible through the Federal Cultural Gifts Program, designed to assist in recognising the importance of collecting Australia’s culturally valuable artworks.”

As a highly-acclaimed Australian author, actor, comedian and artist, Anh Do was delighted to contribute to the Manning Regional Art Gallery collection.

“’I was thrilled to be a finalist in the Manning Art Prize and so when the curator asked me if I would consider donating the painting to the gallery I thought, why not!

“I ove the Manning region and look forward to visiting your beautiful gallery.”

Artworks in the Manning Regional Art Gallery Collection are regularly featured at the gallery throughout the year, most recently in January.

For information on other gallery events and upcoming exhibitions, visitwww.manningregionalartgallery.com.au

Comedian Anh Do reveals a winning way with the brush

Great Lakes Advocate

New job for Anh: Anh Do, who recently took up painting, is already a winner. Picture: Emilie Alford

HAVING grown up in southern Sydney, comedian Anh Do had no trouble feeling at home in Kogarah Library when he was announced winner of the Kogarah Art Prize.

The $8000 prize was an acknowledgement that his latest job description — artist — was heading in the right direction.

The Vietnamese refugee who was meant to be a lawyer but instead became a popular comedian and author now spends a lot of his time painting.

He started taking art seriously last year, he said, although he was already an artist by inclination and training.

‘‘I used to skip law classes to go to Meadowbank TAFE — and sometimes the affiliated St George TAFE — to study art,’’ he said.

He took up law because ‘‘mum was looking after three kids and my goal was to buy her a house as soon as possible’’.

Then comedy came along and Mrs Do got her house but Anh’s art was put on the backburner.

‘‘I’m doing a bit less comedy now, mainly focusing on my TV specials, and painting a lot more,’’ he said.

‘‘I’ve converted our double garage into a studio and my wife is a little annoyed that the cars are now outside.’’

Since taking art serious Anh has acquired a mentor, artist Paul Ryan, and has secured an exhibition at the Olsen Irwin Gallery in 2015.

Multitalented: Anh Do with his Kogarah Art Prize-winning entry.

In the meantime he enters art competitions such as the Kogarah Art prize which is ‘‘quite a big deal in the art world with a high calibre of artists’’.

So far he has scored one win, one second place and a people’s choice.

‘‘I enter to test myself,’’ he said.

‘‘I love painting — I’ve always been more on an introvert than an extrovert. I was really quiet at school and while I wasn’t good at some subjects, I was good at art.’’

Anh also loves people, be it to watch them for comedy ideas or to paint them as in the case of Wombat Man, the subject of his winning painting.

‘‘He is a local character — and although only about 45 years old he reminds me of a sage,’’ he said.

Although ‘‘local’’ these days means the south coast where he lives with wife, three sons and a new-born daughter, Anh grew up at Arncliffe and lays claim to a lot of friends at Kogarah High School. And he remembers the old Rockdale flea market as a family reward.

‘‘If someone in the family did something really well, like won a prize at school, my mother would take us to the Rockdale flea markets where we could pick whatever we liked as long as it was under $5,’’ Anh said.

‘‘You could always stumble on to something good.’’

On one such trip, when he was about 14 and getting into the Beatles, he found an entire set of their music on cassette tape.

‘‘I joined with my brother for that one because it cost $10.’’

JUDGE IMPRESSED

The third Kogarah Art Prize, announced on Friday, June 20, was judged by Anne Loxley, curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney.

She selected 35 works out of the 179 submitted and described the exhibition as strong and interesting.

The Wombat Man also won the packing room prize.

Place of Reeds Prize ($3000) was won by Annabelle Josse for Now and Then Commended Prize ($1000) went to Sallwa Hourani for Stage II

The art prize exhibition is on show at Kogarah Library until July 13.

Have you see the art prize exhibition? 

Why comedian Anh Do turned his hand to painting for the Archibald Prize

Great Lakes Advocate

The Archibald Prize always unearths a few surprises and this year was no exception with a portrait by comedian Anh Do among the finalists. Do’s painting depicts his father Tam emerging from the canvas in thick swathes of paint, his dark eyes staring intently at the viewer.

Artist Ben Quilty, one of 11 trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW who judge the prize, describes the portrait as a “lovely surprise”.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“We didn’t know it was Anh’s work,” Quilty says. “But there is an honesty and quiet strength in the painting that stood out immediately.”

The 37-year-old Do painted his father, who brought his family to Australia as refugees in 1980, shortly after a stay in hospital. The artist tells the story in the exhibition label: “He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

 

Photo gallery

 

Change of art

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

“I had some music on, it was just a mix, and then Nirvana comes on,” he says. “And I remember being 14, nah about 16, listening to Nirvana, hating my dad and so I went through a period of painting where I was hating him.”

But a new song triggered a different mood. “Some Leonard Cohen came on and that was when I reconnected with him,” he says. “So I start crying, y’know, because that’s when I saw him again.”

Do says he also cried while writing about his father in The Happiest Refugee. “At least with painting it was all done in about four-and-a-half hours.”

But there were no tears when Do took his father to the Art Gallery of NSW to see the portrait. “He looked at it and he goes, ‘I reckon I look better than that’,” Do says. “And then he said, ‘Nah, that’s me on a Saturday arvo after losing at the horses’.”

Do’s brother Khoa, a filmmaker and board member of the Australia Council for the Arts, says the portrait is “really very powerful”.

“I think it captures the essence of our father exceptionally well – especially in those eyes,” he says. “Eyes of such pain and longing mixed in with a quiet peace and acceptance.”

The director of the Schapelle Corby telemovie, Khoa says his father’s departure was unexpected and particularly tough on his older brother. “I remember a period of moving from one place to another, living in a sewing factory for a while, helping Mum make garments so she could pay for electricity bills,” he says. “But I guess just as quickly as our father left, my brother, sister and I grew up.”

In contrast to his flawed father, Do says his mother Hien was always supportive, even as she struggled to support her family single-handedly working three jobs. He recalls her buying second-hand books from an op shop when he was struggling with English. “Of course, it’s not like her reading was any good but she was trying,” Do says.

As a teenager, Do became the family’s spokesman, calling landlords to ask for extra time to pay the rent. “It makes you grow up fast,” he says.

Do turned his autobiography into a stage show that he will perform again around Australia in October and November, including dates at the State Theatre and Enmore Theatre in Sydney and the Canberra Theatre. He is also working on a film script based on The Happiest Refugee after Russell Crowe bought the movie rights for the book.

Do says he accepted Crowe’s offer with one “absolute condition”. “I really want to play the role of my father, and Russell said, ‘Deal’,” he says.

Do has also written three children’s books including The Little Refugee, a retelling of his autobiography for young readers. Yet he shies away from commenting directly on debates about the treatment of refugees.

“I’m a comedian,” he says. “It’s like this. I’m an asthmatic so if you want to ask someone about asthma, ask a doctor. I’m asthmatic but I’m not an expert on it.”

Do’s fearless approach to life is nonetheless shaped by his experience as a refugee. He was always interested in art but studied law at university because he was determined to buy his mother a house. “We moved house 20-something times because of financial reasons,” Do says. “I just didn’t want a landlord to kick us out any more.”

At the end of his law degree, he tried stand-up comedy, starting on the career that has brought him considerable success for more than a decade. Yet he says: “I think I got into the wrong job, you know, when I became a comedian. I prefer the company of my family or close friends. You don’t see me going to a lot of events like the Logies and all that kind of stuff. I’m quite a private person. I’m much more comfortable in the studio.”

Do’s portrait is a favourite to win the People’s Choice, which is voted for by visitors to the Archibald exhibition, and will be announced on September 11. His success in the Archibald Prize is no fluke – in the past 12 months, he has been a finalist in a number of art prizes and won the $8000 Kogarah Art Prize in July for Wombat Man.

Judge Anne Loxley, a curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, said Do’s winning work was “a commanding portrait, and the bravura of his painting style is very impressive”.

He was also a finalist in the Mosman Art Prize for his portrait of friend David Horton, a sculptor and teacher at the National Art School, and will have his first solo show at Olsen Irwin gallery in 2015.

Do uses Horton and fellow Archibald Prize finalist Paul Ryan to bounce ideas off and critique his work.

Says Horton: “What we’ve seen is he’s just gotten better by the sheer fact he is making a lot of paintings and listening to criticism.

“He’s got the means. He can afford good paints and good canvases. And there is an underlying talent there, anyway.”

Do took up painting about four years ago, following the death of a close friend, enrolling in a TAFE course and enlisting Ryan’s help to refine his work. Like his mentor, whose portrait of actor Richard Roxburgh is also in this year’s Archibald Prize exhibition, Do lathers the canvas with thick layers of paint – a far cry from the days when he had money for neither.

“I’m drawn to the texture of it as well as the colour,” Do says. “I love the accidental beautiful bits that can happen with thick paint when you just throw it on.

“What happens is it mixes itself. Because I have no idea what the paint is going to end up like, I often don’t mix a colour completely.”

It is a style reminiscent of many of Australia’s top artists including Quilty and Nicholas Harding.

“I think he’s coming through a particular style at the moment,” Horton says. “Any good artist works through another artist’s influence and then you gradually develop your own style.”

The Archibald Prize is at the Art Gallery of NSW until September 28, before touring galleries in regional Victoria and NSW.

Anh Do

It’s not something one would expect a successful comedian, performer and writer at the height of his career to do – turn his hand to painting. Anh Do’s life has been full of challenges and, from humble beginnings, he has thrived on making his own destiny. Art is an important part of his life – for him it’s serious business. What is surprising is the commitment and enthusiasm he brings to his work, and his willingness to learn from other artists, from books and from understanding art of the past. Proving a few people wrong in the art world isn’t the hardest part of the challenge he has set himself – it’s meeting his own tough standards of being the best possible painter. Right now, he’s on track.

Why the move from stand-up comedy and books into art? Has it always been a part of your being or is it another creative outlet?
When I was at school, I wasn’t great at writing or performing or anything like that but I was actually pretty good at art. Somewhere along the way however, I was told that art was not a good subject to pick if I wanted top marks for my Higher School Certificate.

My mum raised three kids on her own from sweatshop wages of six bucks an hour, so landlords were constantly knocking on the door demanding the late rent. At 13 years of age I promised myself that I’d buy my mum a house as soon as I left school so that we’d never be hassled by landlords again.

I heard that lawyers make plenty of money so I decided that’s what I wanted to be, never once questioning whether it was the correct path for me. So all through school, getting the marks for law was the absolute focus. And along the way, I sacrificed my love of making art. It hurt to watch the other guys go off to paint and draw, and I’d go off to physics or four-unit maths or something else I hated.

At the end of year 12, I scored 98 in the HSC which allowed me to study law at university. But I couldn’t help myself, I also signed up  to study fine arts at TAFE at the same time. I ended up skipping just about all my law classes so that I could attend my art classes. It wasn’t even a close contest. I mean, what would you rather do? Go off to memorise clause 1.3.1 subclause 1.7 of Contracts Law or sit around sketching nude women?

Eventually comedy came along and wiped everything else out.

So did you ever buy your mum the house?
Yeah, I was 23, had worked as a comedian for nearly two years, saved up every penny for a deposit, and bought mum one of the most beautiful houses in the suburb – lucky for me houses in that suburb were very cheap.

How have you noticed your painting process develop, and what does the act of painting bring to you personally?
The act of painting for me is a strange mix of bliss mixed with incredible torture. With most of my paintings I want to give up a thousand times. It really is punishment, mistake after mistake. I’m constantly saying to myself “What did I do that for?”… “Anh, you’re an idiot!”… “Oh dear, that’s REALLY bad”.

But I keep going, and more times than not, the end result is something I’m quite okay with. So painting teaches me to keep going. For me it’s a metaphor for life. Sometimes you wake up in the morning, you think about the bills, the stress, the hassles … and you think “what am I doing?” But if you just keep going and accept that the doubt, the fear, the mistakes are all part of the journey, you give yourself permission to be at peace with the ups, the downs and the in-betweens.

Just recently I’ve been learning to appreciate more of life’s “in-betweens”. The everyday “humdrum” actually offers a lot of beauty if you look for it.

Has your migrant upbringing influenced your work – and if so, how?
I used to say that my Asian heritage has me attracted to the concept of economical brushstrokes – to capture the essence of a subject in as few marks as possible, like the ancient oriental masters.

But that’s actually just a sexy explanation I made up. The truth is that I take the kids to school at 9am. I have four to five hours of painting, then I need to pick them up at 2.30pm. If I don’t finish a painting within that time, they might just come home into the garage and “help dad out”. That almost always results in disaster. So most of my paintings are done very quickly, very instinctively.

What are the themes you are currently interested in pursuing in your work?
I paint portraits because I’m interested in people. I’ve always been fascinated by people, their dreams, desires, fears, regrets, their sadness.

When I’m onstage performing a comedy show, I sometimes make eye contact with a woman, or sometimes a man still wiping away tears from the story I told about my mother a few minutes ago … even though I’m onto the next batch of jokes. He/she is probably thinking about their own mother, or maybe their son or daughter, and I’ll feel a connection with them. We have an exchange, the guy on the stage, the person in the audience … we share a connection that’s incredibly intimate for two people who have never met properly.

I feel like some of the great artists still reach down and connect with us, “give to us” even though they left us hundreds of years ago. Rembrandt and Soutine are still giving to us.

How planned are your images? Do chance and spontaneity play a part in your work?
It’s all a big game of chance. When I finish a good painting, I’m often a little bit emotional. I am just so grateful that I have been able to “fluke” the painting. If I was asked to do another painting exactly the same, I’d fail miserably. I mostly have no idea what I’m doing.

My wife has a theory that because I own over 1000 art books, and I’m obsessed with art, maybe some of it has sunk in, maybe it’s in my subconscious. I tell her if that’s the case, how come I just as often do really terrible paintings?

I pretty much just “let go” and chance does the rest. At the end of the day – if it’s a bad painting, I slash it and it goes in the bin. Luckily these days, there’s more good than bad, and I’m truly thankful for that.

What has been the most difficult part of putting on your first show and exhibiting professionally?
I hate all of it. It’s really difficult because I don’t want to sell a single painting from the show because they are the ones I love. The ones I don’t love are at the tip, and so opening night comes, and there I am with
all the paintings that I want to keep … and I’m seeing them for the last time.

Who are your major influences and inspirations in painting?
Probably a thousand artists – I do own over 1000 art books. I love walking into a second-hand book shop and discovering some old German expressionist I’ve never heard of. But at the end of the day if I was forced to choose, I’d have to say my favourite three are Van Gogh, Goya and Rembrandt. I think I can be as good as Goya if I painted for eight … maybe nine hundred years.

Where do you see your work heading in the future?
I have no idea. I can guess, but I’ll probably be wrong. I have no idea what’s going to happen when I chuck the next brushload of paint onto the nose of a portrait, let alone predict the future of my body of work.

Anh Do is represented by Olsen Irwin Gallery 

Courtesy the artist and Olsen Irwin Gallery
Photographer Tony Lopes

Aussie Comedian Anh Do Paints Celebrities In New ABC Series

“I love painting and I love great conversation with interesting people. And one day I thought, you know what, why not put the two together?”

This is how Aussie comedian and artist Anh Do came up with the idea for his new show ‘Anh’s Brush with Fame’, an eight-part series for the ABC in which Do paints the portraits of several Aussie celebs, interviewing them at the same time.

And when we say celebs, we’re not talking about the latest evictee from ‘The Bachelor’ (sorry, Keira). We’re talking big names like Jimmy Barnes, Magda Szubanski, Anthony Mundine and even the legendary neurosurgeon Dr Charlie Teo.

“I wanted to interview people I love and admire, people I find fascinating,” Do told The Huffington Post Australia. “So I came up with a list of the eight people who are in the first series.

“One of the best parts of the show — actually, what I enjoyed most — was how generous the guests were in opening up and sharing with me their stories — a lot of stories they don’t often share in the media.”

Anh Do, where all the magic happens. (His studio).

“All of them told me something I’d never known about them,” Do continued. “And I did months of research about each of them.

“For instance, Kate Ceberano told me about her mum one day sitting her down and saying, ‘when I was 16, I was pregnant and I gave the baby up for adoption. So you actually have a brother you don’t know about.’ And then Kate goes and meets this guy who is her half brother.

“Jimmy Barnes having a drinking problem has been well publicised. But I said to him, ‘how much were you actually drinking?’ and he said ‘three to four bottles of whiskey a night.’

“I was like, ‘Jimmy, that’s like 100 drinks!’ and he said, ‘yeah, it nearly killed me’. He ended up having to have heart surgery.”

Kyle [Sandlilands] is a lot of things but he’s never boring. That’s the criteria for me.

When it’s put to Do that his guest list is certainly varied — for instance, the careers of Dr Teo and radio shock-jock Kyle Sandilands are hardly comparable — Do says his main criteria for each guest was that they were interesting.

“Kyle is a lot of things but he’s never boring. That’s the criteria for me,” Do said. “Guests can’t be boring.

“A guest like Kyle is always going to be interesting. In fact, he was absolutely fascinating. When he was homeless he used to sleep at a service station, and at night he used to listen to the radio coming through the bowsers. Those human voices became his company, and that’s how he fell in love with radio.

“[With all my guests] I really want to talk, go deep you know,” he continued. “I wanted to ask ‘what’s your life philosophy? What’s your deepest regret? What’s your greatest joy?’ I wanted to go there.”


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Magda Szubanski and Anh Do.

Now for the really juicy question: what did everyone think of their portraits?

“You know what’s really interesting? Most of the guests liked their paintings,” Do said. “Well, they all tell me they like it, but some of them I could tell really didn’t. They were like, ‘oh yeah, that’s great, thanks Anh…’

“Magda said she loved it. She said ‘I love it hun, it’s going right up in the hallway. Next time you’re in Melbourne come for dinner.’

“But this makes me nervous because when I go over, what if it’s not there? What if it’s in the garage? She’ll have to drag it out. She’ll have to say ‘quick, Anh’s coming! Just stick it up just for this dinner.’

“I’m actually really nervous before the reveal. I’m really nervous before I spin the painting around. I’m like the contestant on ‘MasterChef’ before Matt Preston takes the first bite. You know, I might have just had a great three hour chat to my guests, but then if they hate the painting, I feel terrible.

“I pretend I don’t care, but deep down I care. I care lots.”

Rosie Batty leaves Anh Do in tears as she recalls the night her son Luke was murdered

BEREAVED mother Rosie Batty has left ABC-TV host Anh Do in tears after a profoundly moving interview about her “beautiful boy” Luke.

The domestic violence campaigner appeared on the second episode of this season of Anh’s Brush with Fame on the ABC on Wednesday night, in which comedian and artist Anh Do paints a portrait of a noted Australian while they reflect on their life story.

The show proved a deeply emotional one for both Rosie and Anh Do.Source:ABC

In a rare insight into Ms Batty’s life beyond the tragic murder that has publicly defined it, she told Do that she suddenly lost her mother at the age of six, and, she and her two brothers were not told of her death until after her funeral had been held.

The trauma of that event has haunted her throughout her life, so, when she accidentally fell pregnant with Luke, she told Do the thought of bringing a child into the world that she could one day lose terrified her.

“When I found out I was pregnant, I really was very overwhelmed,” she said.

Luke and Rosie on holiday.Source:Supplied

“Part of me was scared because I was going to be a single parent and I didn’t want a child because I was frightened I would lose a child.

“So, this is the kind of fear I’d had about something that you love so much, like my mum, you can lose at any time.”

Tragically, Ms Batty’s fears were realised when Luke’s father, Greg Anderson, bludgeoned the 11-year-old to death at cricket training at Tyabb, on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, in February 2012.

Ms Batty broke down several times as she recalled the hot summer night Luke died, when police would not let her near her son’s body and he lay for hours alone in the dark.

“They wouldn’t let me go to him, yeah, and it was really hard,” she said.

Rosie Batty and Greg Anderson with son Luke as a baby. Ms Batty described Luke as “the best thing that happened to me”.Source:News Limited

“It got to, you know, hours sitting in the police car, hours and hours, literally hours and you’re in shock, so you’re really not aware of time.

“I said, ‘I want to go and see my little boy,’ and they said, ‘No, Rosie. No. We’re looking after him.’

“But for him to be alone at night and cold, it was just horrible.

“You can never imagine the pain that’s possible and you can never imagine that you would ever, ever have to face that about your child and there was nothing, anything that could be done.”

Ms Batty’s sad recollection of the night her son died moved Do to tears, with the host seen wiping his eyes as the camera focused on him.

Anh Do wipes away a tear as Rosie recounts her tragic story.Source:ABC

Police who were called to the Tyabb cricket ground that night fatally shot Luke’s father, after capsicum spray failed to subdue him.

Ms Batty told Do that she felt fortunate they did.

“I think I’m lucky in an unlucky way that Greg actually did die,” she said.

“And when I say that, it’s because I didn’t have to go through a criminal trial and also, I don’t have to deal with mixed emotions about Luke being dead and Greg being alive.

“I felt Greg was a tortured soul. I don’t hate him. I feel a lot of sorrow for his family.”

Ms Batty tearfully told Do that four years on, her son’s death continues to haunt her every single day.

“It’s still hard, every day,” she said.

“There’ll be a moment in every day, every day, that you just … the emotion is just simmering underneath.”

Ms Batty described the unexpected gift of her son as “the best thing that ever happened to me”.

“I was really lucky, because he was a really beautiful little boy,” she said.

“He was really beautiful, and everyone used to say how handsome he was. And he was beautiful and he was funny.

“But, you know, he was really sweet, because sometimes if I was upset, and it could’ve been because Greg had done something, whatever it may be, you know, he’d sometimes write me a little note and just say, you know, “I love you, Mum,” or something.

“I used to think, ‘Gosh, I’m really proud that I have a little boy that knows how to reach out to you and say, ‘It’s OK, Mum.’”

She told Do that Luke once apologised to her after unsuccessfully trying to intervene in an attack on her by his father.

A note Luke Batty wrote to his mum Rosie before his death.Source:ABC

“There was one incident where Greg assaulted me, and it was really frightening, I was frightened, Luke was frightened,” she said.

“Basically, it had escalated to Greg pretty much chasing me around the house and I was screaming into the phone for the police to come.

“It was the first time, really, I was really frightened physically.

“As soon as he kind of, I don’t know, kicked me or threw me on the ground and stuff, he’d left and Luke said to me, ‘I’m sorry, Mum. I’m too little,’ and I just said, you know, ‘This is not your place.’”

Luke was just 11 when he was killed by his father.Source:Supplied

It was the incident that led to a magistrate banning Anderson from seeing his son and ultimately, his plan to kill him.

There was just one place Ms Batty consented to Anderson seeing his son, cricket training, with its large numbers of people leading her to believe it would be a safe place.

On the night her son died, she said her mentally disturbed former partner appeared to be in a happy mood.

“When I was driving (Luke) to cricket practice, we didn’t know for sure whether Greg was going to be there or not,” she said.

“He was and he stood up and he had a big smile.

“I thought, ‘Great, he’s in a good mood. I can relax.’

Five years on, Rosie Batty says every single day she still gets emotional about the loss of her son.Source:ABC

“Luke came to me and said, ‘Oh, Mum, I haven’t seen Dad for a while. He’s asked me if I can have a few extra minutes,’ and I thought, ‘Aw, that’s nice.’

“You know, he hasn’t seen Greg for a while, and Greg’s in a good mood and this is a lovely night, and all is good.

“So I said, ‘Sure you can, mate.’

“I knew where Luke and Greg were. I had just invited somebody over for dinner, and the next thing, there was this noise, a human noise, but a noise of anguish I’ve never heard before.”

Luke had been bludgeoned with a cricket bat before being stabbed by his own father.

He died of massive head injuries.

The finished portrait by Anh Do.Source:ABC

The surprise portrait of Luke that Anh gifted to Rosie at the end of the show.Source:ABC

Ms Batty almost immediately became a voice for victims of domestic violence, telling reporters outside her home the day after her son’s death that it was something that did not discriminate.

“Family violence happens to everybody, no matter how nice your house is, how intelligent you are, it happens to anyone,” the grief-stricken mother remarkably said to reporters that day.

The cause she took up saw her named Australian of the Year in 2015, an honour she dedicated to Luke.

“I feel that I’m really lucky that I’ve been able to channel my grief in a really positive way,” she said.

Rosie Batty and Anh Do in the second season of his ABC series Anh’s Brush with Fame.Source:ABC

“I think, well, providing I am making some difference, then I know Luke hasn’t died in vain. “But I think of so many women and so many children who are terrorised and living in their homes with no choice, no safety, nowhere to go.

“It does make you feel better to push through and do them and know that, you know,

you’ll always have a degree of sadness, but you don’t have to let it consume you and pull you into an abyss you can’t get out of.

“But, you know, I feel compelled to keep doing what I’m doing.

“It’s ironic that I’ve never been so personally rewarded on every level, except it’s happened, you know, in a way that no-one would want to have happen.”

Anh Do wins Archibald Prize

23/11/14

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a

Artist Ben Quilty, one of 11 trustees of the Art Gallery of NSW who judge the prize, describes the portrait as a “lovely surprise”.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable.

The 37-year-old Do painted his father, who brought his family to Australia as refugees in 1980, shortly after a stay in hospital. The artist tells the story in the exhibition label: “He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Are will took form the nor true

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.

No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth, the master-builder of human happiness.

No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

Nor again is there anyone who loves or pursues or desires to obtain pain of itself, because it is pain, but because occasionally circumstances occur in which toil and pain can procure him some great pleasure.

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Birkendose getunchten em vertreiben

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Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt.

Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Legerement ii pu enveloppes ecouterent electrique

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire,

that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided.

On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire,

that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain.

These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided.

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Ma ni oh asusta servir el vulgar

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam,

eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo. Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt.

Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt.

Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Gentleman eat and consisted are pronounce distrusts

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable.

The 37-year-old Do painted his father, who brought his family to Australia as refugees in 1980, shortly after a stay in hospital. The artist tells the story in the exhibition label: “He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Air appris peints usines mollir iii des cahots

Sed ut perspiciatis unde omnis iste natus error sit voluptatem accusantium doloremque laudantium, totam rem aperiam, eaque ipsa quae ab illo inventore veritatis et quasi architecto beatae vitae dicta sunt explicabo.

Nemo enim ipsam voluptatem quia voluptas sit aspernatur aut odit aut fugit, sed quia consequuntur magni dolores eos qui ratione voluptatem sequi nesciunt. Neque porro quisquam est, qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit, sed quia non numquam eius modi tempora incidunt ut labore et dolore magnam aliquam quaerat voluptatem.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable.

The 37-year-old Do painted his father, who brought his family to Australia as refugees in 1980, shortly after a stay in hospital. The artist tells the story in the exhibition label: “He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

En hinabsah so gedanken wo gedichte burschen

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth,

the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

But I must explain to you how all this mistaken idea of denouncing pleasure and praising pain was born and I will give you a complete account of the system, and expound the actual teachings of the great explorer of the truth,

the master-builder of human happiness. No one rejects, dislikes, or avoids pleasure itself, because it is pleasure, but because those who do not know how to pursue pleasure rationally encounter consequences that are extremely painful.

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.

Triunfos levantar han sublimes pie sol cruzaban

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don’t look even slightly believable.

The 37-year-old Do painted his father, who brought his family to Australia as refugees in 1980, shortly after a stay in hospital. The artist tells the story in the exhibition label: “He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

“He’d dropped to 50 kilos and when I hugged him I could feel his ribs. I spent the next few days wondering how long this skinny, fearless man could keep defying the odds.”

That complexity of vision illuminates the 36-year-old’s  first novel, City on Fire (Knopf), an epic of New York set in the mid-1970s,
a critical moment in the city’s history, and America’s. The 927-page book, which was optioned by Scott Rudin even before it sold for
a reported $2 million, is a kind of punk Bleak House, brimming with power brokers and anarchists, cops and journalists, rockers and wannabes. After all, a metropolis is made up not just of stone and steel but of stories: the dreams and delusions of private lives in close proximity, and the public mythologies that ignite them.

At the center are two storytellers: Samantha, or Sam, a Long Island wild child, the teenage author of a punk-music zine; and Mercer, an aspiring writer from the South who comes to the city to pen the great American novel, only to fall helplessly in love with an artist and musician with a few secrets, as well as track marks, up his sleeves. Their stories intersect one night in Central Park, when a high-profile crime transpires, and Mercer, black, gay, and in the wrong place at the wrong time, immediately becomes a suspect.

Surprise entry: Comedian and TV star Anh Do has a portrait among the finalists of the Archibald Prize.

“That’s a son’s painting of a dad that he worries he might not see again,” says Do.

Beyond a son’s concern for his ailing father, Do’s portrait tells a more complicated story of Tam’s alcoholism and abandonment of the family he rescued from strife-torn Vietnam.

Do has built an impressive comic career across television, stand-up and film; his sunny demeanour has featured on television programs including The Matty Johns Show, Pizza and his ongoing travelogue series Anh Does….

But that is a different side to the contemplative man reliving the turmoil caused by his father’s addiction. “He drank heavily and when I was 13 he left the family,” he says. “I didn’t see him for eight years and I hated him for a big part of my childhood just for not being there and making mum look after three kids on six bucks an hour.”

Anh Do’s portrait of his father.
It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his

It wasn’t until Do was 21 and studying law at the University of Technology, Sydney, that he decided to seek out his father, who was living in Melbourne. He recalls driving through the night for the reunion only to be confronted at the door of his father’s unit by a woman, barely older than Do, with a baby.

“And I figure, ‘Wow, I’ve got this half-brother’,” Do says. “To find that out is confronting.

“I thought to myself, I won’t hang around for long. But I’d driven from Sydney to Melbourne so I thought I’d have a quick bite and I’ll walk away and never come back. Obviously he’s moved on.

“‘Dad’, I said. ‘He’s cute. What’s his name’?”

His father’s reply: “Anh. I named him after you.”

That revelation was a bombshell for Do after so many years of hating his father. “I thought my father had forgotten about me,” he says. “But I realised that he missed me as much as I missed him.”

Do is sitting upstairs in the Illawarra coast home he has made with wife Suzanne and their four children – three-month-old daughter Summer and her older brothers, five-year-old Leon, Luc, 8 and Xavier, 10. Downstairs in a double garage is his studio, impeccably neat and organised with military precision. Four large heads – created with thick swathes of paint lathered on canvas like frosting on a cake – sit on easels around a large table covered in paint-splattered plastic.

Neatly-stacked tubs are filled with chef’s palette knives of varying length and lethalness. Do uses them to apply paint in quick, broad strokes. Stacks of heavy hardcover books about artists such as Rembrandt, Cy Twombly and Pete Doig fill one tabletop, while another is arranged with tins of oil paint. Light and the chill air seeps through sliding doors that look out on the ocean on this stormy winter’s day.

Upstairs, Do’s back is turned to the scenic vista of coastal cliffs and beach battered by furious seas as he reflects on his father. “Now that I have four kids, I realise you love your kids forever, no matter what,” he says. “You love your kids forever.”

Do admits his younger self found it difficult to understand his father’s actions. “He used to call my grandma every week to check on us,” he says. “And I said, ‘Why didn’t you come back?’

“And he said, ‘You guys were doing so well without me. I didn’t want to come back and have my drinking affect you guys’.”

Do has rebuilt a relationship with his father, who he says is now “my best mate in the whole world”.

“I realised when he’s not intoxicated he’s the best dad.”

Do told the story of his relationship with his father and the family’s arduous journey to Australia as boatpeople in his award-winning 2010 autobiography, The Happiest Refugee. Painting a portrait of his father brought back those memories and the feelings he experienced during those years of estrangement. He worked on the portrait in his garage studio, painting with music in the background. Each song took him back to his younger days.