Adelaide artist David Hardy says it was Don Morrison’s “strong persona and story” that first inspired him to paint the local musician and luthier for this year’s Archibald Prize.

The duo has known each other for more than 20 years, meeting through the Hillbilly Hoot, an open mic music night run by Three D Radio station. It was at the grass-roots music gathering in October last year that Hardy first approached Morrison about sitting as his subject for the prestigious painting competition.

Hardy says he was drawn to the singer-songwriter’s life story, his look and his stage presence.

“He’s written his life story in his songs, really, but he’s also written a book called This Could Be Big: 40 Years at the Dag End of the Australian Music Industry,” Hardy says.

“And his appearance – he’s a distinctive-looking bloke and he’s got hair, which helps. He’s got a very strong persona and wears his check shirts and he makes these guitars and the way he plays them is very forceful.

“When you talk to him, he’s quite shy and reserved, but his music and his appearance is one of strength and I tried to show that in the painting.”

Morrison has been a mainstay of the Adelaide music scene since the late 1970s. He started out in a band with his brothers called The Sensational Bodgies and has played in various line-ups over the years, most recently with his sons Jake and Eddie in a band called Don Morrison’s Raging Thirst.

He says when Hardy first mentioned painting him for the Archibald, he thought: “Why would anybody want to do that?”. 

“But I thought it was something different and new, something I hadn’t experienced before, so why not?”

David Hardy says he doubled his workload when he committed to paint the corrugated iron of the ‘dunny’. Photo Jack Fenby / InReview

Hardy started the process by sketching the musician in his guitar-making workshop, as well as doing a practice watercolour painting and taking numerous reference photos. When it came time to sit for the painting, Hardy wanted a rustic backdrop such as galvanised iron or timber, and as they walked around Morrison’s backyard, the singer-songwriter suggested: “What about the old dunny?”.

“It was perfect,” Hardy says. “But that doubled my workload because what I paint is realism and I had to get that right [the corrugated iron toilet] as well as getting him right, as well as the guitar, so there’s three elements.”

The painting – titled A Legend In Adelaide, taken from a line in Morrison’s song “A Conversation with the Man from EMI” – took four months to complete. Hardy had an unveiling last month at his Magill home, where Morrison says he was impressed when he saw the final result.

“Except for the fact that it looked like me,” he laughs. “But just things like the detail and the colour, the checks on the shirt, all that sort of thing – it was really high-class sort of stuff.”

Hardy says the painting reflects Morrison’s grit, personality and raw talent spanning songwriting, singing, guitar playing and guitar making. Morrison, through his brand DonMo, hand-makes metal-bodied resonator guitars from scrounged materials including old sheets of corrugated steel.

He just grinds away, plays his music and writes his songs, which I think are fabulous

Hardy says that the Archibald subject is supposed to be somebody “noted in arts, letters or politics”.

“That is a bit old fashioned, but Don is very well known in music circles in Adelaide, he’s worked all his life in the industry, and he is also a guitar maker who sells his guitars all over the world, so as far as I was concerned, he was very well qualified to sit,” he says.

“He’s a singer, songwriter, luthier and author, and he’s been doing all of those things with great passion all his life.

A Legend In Adelaide: David Hardy’s portrait of Don Morrison.

“He could have given up but he hasn’t and, to me, he’s a journeyman, done the whole nine yards, without help from any rich person. He just grinds away, plays his music and writes his songs, which I think are fabulous, songs like ‘Grand Junction Road’ and ‘Five Men in a Car’ and ‘The Hay Plain Blues’. I have a lot of respect for him, put it that way.”

Hardy, who is an industrial designer by trade and used to design cars, has never formally studied art but has been painting since he was two years old.

This is the first time the 77-year-old has entered the Archibald Prize, encouraged by his partner Janice Dreckow and friends.

“I never saw myself as a portrait painter but then in recent years I’ve done paintings of my grandchildren and others in pencil or pastel… I’d never used watercolour, but the Archibald has to be paint,” says Hardy, who packed up the Morrison painting last week and drove it to Sydney, where it will be judged alongside other works at the Art Gallery of NSW.

Entries are eligible to be considered for the Archibald Prize, the Packing Room Prize and the ANZ People’s Choice award. Finalists and the Packing Room prize winner will be announced on April 27, with the Archibald Prize winner to be announced on May 5 and the People’s Choice Award on August 9.

The exhibition of finalists’ works will be at the Art Gallery of NSW from May to September, after which it will go on tour until August 2024.

So, how does Hardy rate his chances of winning?

“Remote,” he says. “Friends say it’s a winner but they’re just being nice. I’m very happy with it, but I’d be stupid to think more than that.”