Gregory John Brennan: Lost Profession

Looking back on his early career as a bulldozer driver, this rural New South Wales painter laments the days when he was too young to appreciate his outstanding potential as an artist.

- Trevor Lang

Gregory John Brennan was born in Wellington in the central west of New South Wales, back in 1935. He has lived in Narromine for 41 years, and Brewarrina for 10 years. He has worked all over New South Wales in the construction and earthmoving industries.

“The art teacher I had in high school persuaded me to sit a test advertised by the Art Training Institute of Melbourne, as I was winning quite a few prizes at local shows,” he says. “I won a commercial art course scholarship and studied Commercial Art by correspondence for two years. The course incorporated true life drawings, like those in comics, which were ‘the thing’ at the time. When it came to customer appreciation and the psychology of selling, however, I decided to go driving a bulldozer. Looking back, I see a lost profession. But I was too young to appreciate what art had to offer me.”

Greg has always had the same artistic interest in traditional happenings and the world around him. Contemporary work and abstract art did not entice him at all.

The first 12 years of his earthmoving career took the young man away from art completely. He did not paint or draw anything during that time.

“In the mid-1960s, I began to draw and paint again, but just as a hobby,” he reveals. “I competed in a number of exhibitions and slowly gained some recognition during the next two decades. I trained in pen and ink, watercolours and pencils – because there was no place for oils in Commercial Art.”