B

ali-based artist and conservation activist Jason William Francis Monet was a charismatic, larger-than-life figure, the bold strokes of his paintings echoing the scale on which he lived his life.

Born on May 3, 1938, in Sutton Dwellings in London, Jason's earliest memories were of a world at war. His father, one-legged Edwin Daw, injured in the World War I, welcomed his ninth son with a shocked "Jesus!" His mother, Madeline Louise Monet, hopefully and prophetically named the last of her brood Jason after a character in a novel who became an artist.

Madeline was not disappointed. By the time Jason was seven, he was spending most of his spare time at London's Natural History Museum drawing the animals on display; his two great passions - art and wildlife - were already converging.

At 13 he was enrolled at the Christopher Wren Technical School of Graphic Art. By his early 20s, Jason was gaining international recognition as an expressionist painter and sculptor. Elliott Gould and Barbara Streisand were among his earliest collectors.

On hearing of Jason's death, Streisand wrote to his daughters, "I'm glad I saw him again *Monet* when I was in Bali in 2000. I still have the painting of my son, Jason, by your father. As a young couple your father's work was the first artist Elliot *Gould* and I collected, and now his philosophical thoughts about life seem all to be true. His spirit will be missed."

Among Jason's other celebrated, collectors and sitters were Cleo Laine, Jack Palance, Rolf Harris, Michael Caine, John Dankworth, Frankie Howard, Noel Coward and members of Pink Floyd, with whom Jason celebrated the changing world of 1960s London.

In 1963 Jason and his first wife Andrea married, within 10 days of meeting. The couple and their first son, Aaron, journeyed to the West Indies, where Jason spent seven months painting, beginning his love affair with the vibrancy of tropical climates. Soon after their second child Pablo was born, the couple separated and Andrea returned to New York with the children. Jason was devastated.

Close friend Rolf Harris invited Jason to live and work in Malta, where he created two massive limestone sculptures for Harris' restaurant. There, Jason met and fell in love with Doris Brissa, a Maltese Australian.

One night, many years after they had separated physically, while remaining a close family unit, Jason spoke of that first meeting with Doris: "She was the most beautiful woman ever born. She took my breath away."

By 1975, changes to Malta's political status forced the young couple back to London, where they married. Doris, in a sign of what was to come of choosing life with an artist, bought her own engagement and wedding rings. Finding themselves broke in one of the many feast-or-famine cycles of creative expression, Doris and Jason fled the freezing winters of London for Phillip Island, a tiny island off the southern coast of Australia famous for its penguins, where the couple found a home in Doris' parent's holiday cottage.

The couple's four daughters, Camille, Marcelle, Louise and Simone, were born in quick succession. They did it tough in the tiny two-bedroom house 150 kilometers from the nearest art gallery. Phillip Island society in the 1970s consisted of farmers, surfers and a handful of tourists; few were interested in art and even fewer were willing to pay for it.

But even on the other side of the world, the artist still enjoyed the support of lifelong friends Rolf Harris, Barbara Streisand and Elliott Gould. Harris purchased land on Phillip Island for the Monet family and Jason set about building the first of his remarkable homes, the Wooden Palace. Formed of telegraph poles and found objects, the Palace still serves as the family home in Australia.

Jason moved to Bali in the late 1980s, where he created work that was explosive with his delight in a place where just getting out of bed could make him happy. He exhibited his work in Jakarta and across Asia.

His later houses, again built for his family and known as the Rumah Bamboo, stand in Ubud. Jason turned his attention to bamboo as a sustainable building material when he learned of the plight of the Sumatran orangutan. During the past decade, he worked hard for Lucy Wisdom's SOS organization and contributed greatly to raising awareness for the threatened species.

Working for others was not a new element in this generous man's makeup.

The people of Phillip Island remember well the massive bird-shaped wooden slide he built for the local primary school, the life-sized bulls dotting the island and the giant koala he carved to mark the entry to a koala reserve.

He carved the sign for Phillip Island's first health food restaurant, lent a life-size bull as a landmark and brought Rolf Harris along on opening night to stir up business in a town not yet ready for lentil burgers.

He took on the referees when members of his wife's basketball team were beaten to a bloody pulp and never got a goal. He stood watch courtside over the team's string of ethnic-all-sorts children, lined up like pearls in pushers - Doris with her brood of Maltese beauties, Sandy's twins, Jocelyn's little bronzed Aussies, Vicki Reed's redheads and Trisha's China doll - he guarded them all with uproarious laughter as the team lollopped from one end of the court to the other, never seeing the ball.

In public, Jason was a great booming man of incredible vigor and joie de vivre. There was however, a fragility hidden within. Perhaps it was that echo of vulnerability in this strong soul that attracted people from around the world and drove his enormous capacity to love and create.

When asked by daughter Marcelle if he believed in God, Jason's response was: "My Gods are the good people I've known."

Late in 2008 Jason was diagnosed with cancer. He passed away at The Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, on January 19 this year, surrounded by family and friends.

Jason fit more into his seven decades than most of us could achieve in a dozen lifetimes. His legendary creative energy was with him to the end: Just three days before his death, Jason was still working on a 3 x 2 meter painting of Alfred Hospital staff. His eldest daughter Camille, also an artist, is completing the project.

Jason's legacy lives on in his six children, three grandchildren and the formidable body of work created in a life lived large.