biography

Greg Allen was born in Melbourne in 1958.

Armed with a passion to draw and encouraged by creative parents - his father a noted architect - Greg began to develop a precocious understanding of design and materials, and the intricacies of art, in his teenage years, which when honed with tertiary studies in Illustration and Graphic Design, culminated in establishing himself as a professional artist at the age of twenty-three.

Wholly self taught, yet owing inspiration to Harold Herbert, John Singer Sargent and Arthur Streeton, he developed a strong, loose, yet richly-toned realist style tailored to suit not only his love of the robust Australian sunlight, but his increasing desire to paint a broadening range of subject matter, principally in watercolour, but often in oil and even in pastel.

Greg Allen has developed a considerable reputation as one of Australia’s most accomplished watercolourists, both through his consistent award-winning originality and the quality of his works.

His work invariably appears strong, colourful and diverse - aspects indicative of his fundamental enjoyment of light and colour, yet always containing consistent elements of sound design, draftsmanship and a crisp, direct technique. His awards are numerous with some significant ones being a double winner of Australia’s most prestigious watercolour awards at the annual Camberwell Rotary Art Show, as well as its scholarship in 1982.