Sidney has had a lifelong love affair with water colours. And remarkably, his romance with that medium remains as vivid and intense today as during the dalliance of his youth and the courtship of maturity.

He still speaks with awe about the luminosity of paper and the radiance of colour. And he believes unashamedly in finding inspiration in the world's cultural and mythic traditions, using this broad range of subjects and techniques to bring his own works to perfection.

From the studio in his Neutral Bay apartment Fort looked onto a bay fringed with trees he planted decades ago. He put the finishing touches to a series based on the epics of ancient Greece, working with the dazzling dexterity and rapidity of an accomplished water colourist who subscribes to the dictum that one's first brush-stroke should have the precision of the last.  Hesitation is not in his vocabulary.  He relies on instinct for harmonising or contrasting colours, applying his swirling paints not only with conviction and fearlessness but also with an economy of brush-strokes.

His subjects emerge bathed in a gentle and pearly sheen or in a spectrum of shades that rivet the viewer with their vibrancy. Generally, the forms are those of women of all ages and stages in life, with eloquent folds and creases. Fort adores his women, this cavalcade of models that enables him to translate flesh into iridescent fireworks that blaze across the paper's white expanse.

Women have always been and, indeed, are his magnificent obsession. The globes and undulations of their bodies, their hills and valleys, eclipse the beauty of any landscape - each womanly form a veritable world to be worshipped and, inevitably, painted.

Fort notes and approves of the changes in women's attitudes; his models are more informed and assertive than in the past.  He is also drawn to flowers and the essence of what they do rather than what they are. The flowers, foliage and reflections fuse with their background in a series of what he terms "elusive lost and found edges".

Fort was born in Sydney and underwent his initial art training at the Newtown Commercial College and Joe Halloway's Studio. He served in an army survey unit during World War II, after which he resumed his studies with Hal Missingham and Roy Dalgarno at the Studio of Realist Art.

He also studied set design at the New South Wales National Opera School under Robin Lovejoy and painted scenery for the Sydney's Elizabethan and Independent theatres.

Fort joined the Nine Network as senior set designer in 1957. For twenty years his creativity and resource occupied  the television screen across the nation, creating a benchmark with extremely broad canvas and a rewarding audience. Fort also worked as art director on several feature films. It was during this period that, of necessity, he mastered the genre of Trompe I'oeil.  Although he drew inspiration from innovative set designers, he nonetheless admired the austerity of ancient Greek plays which were devoid of theatrical props. The Greeks, he says, exploited the dramatic impact of the environment in which they sited their amphitheatres.  The return to the spontaneity of watercolours is always a joy for him - and the supremacy of art and pursuit of excellence always his main concerns.  In his quest for greater technical expertise and accomplishment, he studied Sumi-e painting with Hoozan Matsumoto. "The traditional brush painting of the Chinese and Japanese and their regard for the use of white paper was of great value to me" he says.

As much as the artistry of Japan charms him, he is also drawn to Europe, especially Greece, exploring the islands, sketching intensively and, on his return, translating his impressions into watercolours. He seems to internalise elements of the Greek landscape and architecture; classical elements, rites of passage and a sense of ancient mystery have emerged as motifs in his work.

He views watercolour as a liberating medium, where speed of execution precludes too much deliberation or rationalisation and, in fact, favours spontaneity and immediacy.              

When inspiration strikes, he dashes off a painting with lightning speed, ever mindful that the painting "takes half-an-hour and 50 years".

Fort still aims to preserve the transparency of white paper. And his familiarity with his preferred medium, watercolour, has bred respect and awe. "If you don't disturb the wash," he says, "even one stroke has a beauty of its own".

By Ann Sarzin