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GRAHAM WILLOUGHBY
Nov. 8, 1942 - Sept. 26, 2024
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RV Branham and I are greatly distressed to announce the recent death of Graham Willoughby, whose drawings and paintings have illuminated Gobshite Quarterly's covers since May, 2003.
Graham was born in Adelaide in 1942. In the early 1960s he trained as a cartographer at the South Australian School of Mines, where his work consisted of transferring information from paired aerial photographs to physical maps.
In 1966 he was appointed cartographer to the newly-established Flinders University of South Australia, where he remained until the end of 1975. After travelling to Scotland and the United States in 1976, he took up work as a geological draftsman in Wittenoom, Western Australia, until the end of 1978. He moved to Melbourne permanently in 1979, where he worked consistently as an artist and supplemented his artistic income with other employment.
His early paintings, from the late 1960s to the early 1970s, consisted of large works in household enamel. From 1973 he worked almost exclusively in watercolour, producing paintings, sometimes on a very large scale, artist's books, and watercolour sculptures. He made weavings in paper and fabric, and throughout his career he produced delicate, complex, surreal and psycholigcally astute drawings in both pencil and Indian ink.
He was a man of great courage and humour. It was marvellous to know him and marvellous to see and wonder at his work. We miss him. We miss the warmth of his gentleness and generosity, of knowing he was alive.
— RV Branham & M. F. McAuliffe
Co-founders, co-editors,
Gobshite Quarterly and Reprobate/GobQ Books
Photo of Graham in his studio/flat in Keswick, South Australia, October, 1975.
Photo by David Johnson, of the Flinders University cartographic staff.
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