For a bloke who started his artistic career drawing the world’s most obscene surfing pig, Tony Edwards is producing some masterful landscapes as he approaches the end of it.
So masterful in fact that the creator of Captain Goodvibes (“the Pig of Steel”) recently sold out his entire Sydney exhibition of 61 canvases in a few days, a career first for the one-time dunny designer to the British royal family. (And I didn’t make that up, although the then-young architectural graduate making his way in London may have embroidered the story a little over the years.)
Tony turns 80 this winter which means it will soon be 50 years since my colleagues at Tracks surfing magazine and I presented him with a real-life piglet at his riotous 30th birthday party, held on the magnificent circular deck of Windyridge, a 1919 sandstone bungalow overlooking Barrenjoey Head and Lion Island at Palm Beach, then being rented by Tony and wife Sally for $30 a week. In 1973 Tracks had started publishing Tony’s down-time doodles of Captain Goodvibes and his sidekick, Astro the Wonder Dog. By the 30th party the following year the Captain was a huge hit and Tracks’ sales were soaring. Tony put away his more serious art, including some wonderful landscapes of the view from Windyridge, and focused on being a rock star cartoonist.
In early 1975 the ABC started a national rock music station called 2JJ and hired the Tracks editor (me) to do the morning surf report with Captain Goodvibes. “They do know he’s a cartoon that I draw?” Tony asked. Yes, I said, but we know you can do the voice, we’ve heard it at parties! The ABC set up landlines at Windyridge and at my renter at Whale Beach and every morning I’d try to give a surf report while the Pig of Steel snorted, grunted and interrupted, muttering stuff like, “Jarratt, you wouldn’t have a bloody clue. You’re not even out of bed yet!” Soon we had a prime-time chat program called The Serf Show (which lasted only two episodes before it was deemed too offensive) and Goodvibes had his own comic magazines, which sold brilliantly.
It couldn’t last, of course, and by the 1980s Tony was back in the city working as an illustrator with the (then) Fairfax newspapers. Friends and colleagues had seen glimpses of his serious work, of course – he even had an exhibition at home at Windyridge and sold well – but the wider world got to see the extent of his talent in 1982 when he published a children’s book called Ralph the Rhino, illustrated with whimsical and often surreal landscapes featuring Ralph cavorting between pyramids, palm trees and balmy seas. Ralph was a best-selling hit, even eliciting a thank you note from comedian and artist Barry Humphries, who had bought a copy for his young son.
When I turned 40 (a long time ago) Tony and Sally Edwards were among many Sydney friends who came to Noosa for the party. We’d just started a local lifestyle magazine, so I offered Tony a pittance and a couple of Eduardo’s lunches to paint a futuristic vision of Noosa for our second cover, and he stayed on. I’ve always loved Tony’s vision of art deco beach palaces backed by green hills and a winding river, and 30 years later, with a bit of restorative work by the artist, that original work became the cover of my book, Place of Shadows.
Tony Edwards became a full-time painter just before the turn of the century, and for the last decade or so he has produced his gems from a backyard studio in a beautifully leafy part of Sydney’s northern beaches peninsula. He still gets the call to pull Goodvibes out of mothballs, and mostly resists, although a recently-reprised Tracks cover briefly morphed into a clothing line. But it does seem that today’s Gen-Zers are not as enthusiastic as we were about an obscene cartoon pig, possibly because there are so many real ones strutting the world stage.
Last month’s exhibition of landscapes and still lifes in inner-city Glebe will be his last, he says. It takes too much energy. But then again, he wasn’t expecting a total sell-out, and what about all those disappointed fans who missed out on getting a red spot! I’m one of them, and I’m sure there are many of us who are hoping that Tony, like Melba, Elton John and the Rolling Stones, will have a few more farewell tours left in him.
