Donald friend biography

Australian artist and diarist

Donald Stuart Leslie Friend (6 February 1915 – 16 August 1989) was an Australian artist and diarist who lived much of his life overseas.

Donald friend prints for sale

Donald friend prints for sale

Donald friend sanur

Donald friend paintings

Donald Friend was an Australian painter, draughtsman and writer, particularly remembered for his drawings and watercolours on paper.

Friend was so delighted by the sexual abuse he committed against young boys in Bali and Sri Lanka that he wrote about it in explicit form.

He has been the subject of controversy since the posthumous publication of diaries in which he wrote about how he sexually abused children during his time in Bali.

Early life

Born in Sydney, Friend grew up in the artistic circle of his bohemian mother and showed early talent both as an artist and as a writer.

He studied with Sydney Long (1931) and Antonio Dattilo Rubbo (1934–1935), and later in London (1936–1937) at the Westminster School of Art with Mark Gertler and Bernard Meninsky. During World War II he served as a gunner with the AIF, and while stationed at Albury began a friendship with Russell Drysdale, which led to their joint discovery of Hill End, a quasi-abandoned gold mining village near Bathurst, New South Wales, which in the 1950s became something of an artists' colony.

He also se