Memories and Photos From David Roessler

Too soon to go, dear John-a best friend I seldom saw.

The first time we met was in 1959 in the Print Room of the National Gallery where I was writing a paper on the Rembrandts and John kindly dug them out, one by one. There were a lot of etchings and engravings and a lot of visits. It had seemed to me, fresh down from Queensland, that all the top blokes in Melbourne were named Stringer-perhaps he knew my new friend, fellow architecture student Richard Stringer?

By 1970 when John arrived in New York my wife and I had a big old wreck of a house in nearby Croton-on-Hudson, so John and his young family came to stay while he did battle with the local housing market. There were many good times and we saw a fair bit of each other in New York.

In later years we both went on to other things, ending up at opposite ends of Australia and meeting seldom. How good it was, a couple of months ago, to get together again here in Brisbane.

I remember John as such a hands-on creative guy. Whether it was making a linocut or inking a graphic design or building furniture, he was wonderfully productive yet ever modest.

But now it’s time for shouldas and I really should’ve taken that invitation to visit Perth.

David Roessler