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Barbara Hanrahan

Artist, Printmaker & Writer

No publication of this image in any form permitted without
permission: contact the Mortlock Library of South Australiana
Image Number B59260

Barbara Janice Hanrahan was born in Adelaide, South Australia, on 6 September 1939. She attended Thebarton Primary School and Thebarton Girls' Technical College. In 1957 Hanrahan commenced a three year Art Teaching course at Adelaide Teachers' College, and supplemented her studies with art classes at the South Australian School of Art. Awarded a Diploma in Art Teaching in 1960, Hanrahan began teaching art in schools; she also enrolled for evening classes with the newly established Printmaking Department at the South Australian School of Art. A year later, in 1961, she was appointed assistant lecturer in art at Western Teachers' College, Adelaide. In the same year she participated in a four-artist exhibition at the Hahndorf Gallery, and was awarded the Cornell Prize for Painting.

During the next 20 years Hanrahan spent much of her time in England. She first departed from Adelaide in 1963 to study at the Central School of Art, London, where she was awarded a Diploma in Etching, with distinction, in 1964. Later she held lecturing appointments at Falmouth and Portsmouth Colleges of Art. On her periodic returns to Adelaide Hanrahan taught at the South Australian School of Art and organised her one-woman exhibitions. The first of these was held in 1964 at the Contemporary Art Society Gallery, Adelaide; during her lifetime she held some 22 solo exhibitions, largely at Bonython Gallery, Adelaide, but also in all other Australian capital cities, as well as London (1969, 1971) and Florence (1970).

In the early 1980s Hanrahan, with her partner Jo Steele, returned to live in Adelaide, where she established her own studio.

Hanrahan's writing career began in 1973 with the publication of her first, largely autobiographical, novel "The scent of eucalyptus"; other titles soon followed, and her last novel "Good night, Mr Moon" was published posthumously in 1992.

"She has put us on the international map and she has done this by focusing on the small and the ordinary and showing us the real interest and dignity in quiet, ordinary lives. She has always written and made her prints with an allegiance to the truth, there is no striving for beauty or for effect. The anguish of real life bursts through the surface decoration of her art and writing". [Jan Owen/ Advertiser: Magazine 21 December 1991, p. 12]

Barbara Hanrahan died on 1 December 1991.



Image courtesy of
the State Library of South Australia