HMAS Canberra (lll) – Garden Island Sydney
- About John Downton
Born in Sydney in 1939, John Downton (OAM) is one of Australia's finest international landscape and navy artists. He was awarded the Order of Australia (OAM) for services to visual arts as a landscape and maritime artist and for services to the community in 2017.
He initially trained and worked in watchmaking but realised his dream later to become a professional artist. He attended classes at the Royal Art Society of NSW and private lessons with George Duncan.
He is passionate about the sea, and he travelled to East Timor in 2000 as an official Navy artist and documented naval and peacekeeping activities in paintings. He continues to paint historical and present-day naval activities, and a gallery has been named after him at the Fleet Air Arm Museum at HMAS Albatross.
John Downton has held exhibitions in Sydney, Eden, Canberra, and internationally. Companies and public institutions have used John's work on calendars and cards. If you want to know more about John’s life he has published a 338 page autobiography, The Dirty Big Red Book: Downton, An Artist on the Move, which includes colour photographs of many of John's works.
- About HMAS Canberra (lll)
HMAS Canberra is an amphibious assault ship designated Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD). Following her commissioning at Fleet Base East, Sydney she the flagship of the Royal Australian Navy. Built by the Spanish owned Navantia and BAE Systems Australia, the LHDs are the largest ships ever constructed for the Royal Australian Navy (RAN). The ships provide the Australian Defence Force with one of the most capable and sophisticated air-land-sea amphibious deployment systems in the world.
The ship's roles are to:
- embark, transport and deploy an embarked force (Army in the case of the ADF but could equally be an allied Army or Marines), along with their equipment and aviation units
- carry out/support humanitarian missions.
More reading
- Additional resources for John Downton
- Additional resources for HMAS Canberra (lll)
