I note with sadness the death of legendary cartoonist Michael Leunig.
He has been a constant of my newspaper-reading life, and the artist my peers and I as art students most tried to emulate.
He flourished in, and somewhat embodied, a golden era in newspaper cartooning - when the pages were covered with drawings about everything and nothing, paid for by the "rivers of gold" of classified ads.
He brought a modernity of style and perspective that challenged the blokey "larrikin" masculinity of our culture, introducing poetic vulnerability, whimsy and insight, commenting more about our condition as humans than on the ephemera of daily politics and news.
As one whose work was deeply personal (while also obscuring of the person), in later years he waged his own battles with social change and fell foul of the polarising identity politics of our time. He did not surrender the stage willingly to younger voices, although to this young aspiring cartoonist years ago he was kind.
He will be remembered as a great and influential cartoonist, artist, poet and philosopher who clearly lived to draw, as he did so to the very last.
Vale.
Cathy Wilcox
President
Australian Cartoonists Association
