Mitty LeeBrown

On this week’s ABR Podcast, Nick Hordern tells the story of Mitty Lee-Brown, the Australian artist who went into self-imposed exile in 1968 to Ceylon, which in 1972 became Sri Lanka. Nick Hordern is a former diplomat and journalist, and the author of several books, including World War Noir: Sydney’s Unpatriotic War. Listen to Nick Hordern’s ‘Mitty Lee-Brown: artist in exile: From a boarding house in Woollahra to Sri Lanka’, published in the July issue of ABR.

Nilaveli, on the north-east coast of Sri Lanka, is a long way from Sydney’s S.H. Ervin Gallery, but when in 2017 I visited the exhibition Margaret Olley: painter, peer, mentor, muse, which traced the links between Olley and her circle, the name of one of her fellow artists took me straight back to the white sands of Nilaveli Beach.