Adam Cullen profile: The last of the warrior painters, ROCKS

Emma Wheaton looks back at the life of Archibald Prize winner Adam Cullen as the Australian art community mourns the death of its star maverick.

He was a bad-boy punk, an extreme artist who painted dead cats, bloodied kangaroos and headless women. His works were variously called juvenile, rebellious, grunge-like and disturbing. At art school he gained notoriety by chaining a rotting pig’s head to his ankle.

But, by the time he died, aged 47, at his home in the Blue Mountains last year, Adam Cullen had been a finalist in the Archibald Prize eight times, winning the award in 2000 for his portrait of actor David Wenham. He was considered one of the country’s most important contemporary artists, an enfant terrible with an angry, almost narcotic intensity, but also a gentle man who donated thousands of dollars worth of works to charity.

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