Andrew Sayers' last paintings exhibited at Beaver Galleries

Bushwalking, running and rowing were favourite pastimes.

He particularly loved the clarity of the "unique" light and how it enhanced the clouds, the bush landscape and the architecture, says his wife, Perry Sperling.

So although he lived away from the capital for more than two years, it's no surprise that some of the former National Museum of Australia director's final paintings were inspired by the Canberra landscape.

Sayers started out as an artist but returned to his roots only in 2013, with his first solo show in Melbourne in May after carving out a career as a curator, art historian and director.

Sayers died at home in Melbourne on October 11 after battling pancreatic cancer since May 2014.

But he was working on pieces for his solo show at Beaver Galleries right up to a day or so before he died after painting throughout his illness, Sperling says.

"He was still able to bring great energy and focus to his painting during this period, even though he was, in fact, very ill," she says. "All of the works in this show were painted in 2014 and 2015, after Andrew moved to Melbourne and started to paint full time.

"However, many of the Canberra images in this show are further developments of earlier works that Andrew painted during the 28-year period that he lived in Canberra."

Looking at Sayers' final paintings, the connection to Canberra is unmistakeable. It even inspired the exhibition title, A Lens of Clear Air – named after Judith Wright's poem describing the setting of Canberra: "This basin in the hills/ holds a lens of clear air".

"I have tried to capture a conjunction of light, landscape space and architecture: a Canberra mood," Sayers wrote in the lead-up to the show.

In his oils and gouaches, rowers are mirrored in the lake's surface along with some of the territory's most distinctive landmarks.

"As a rower himself for many years in Canberra, and then in Melbourne, Andrew enjoyed painting rowers in the clarity and light of this landscape," Sperling says.

"Andrew also loved to paint reflections of the landscape within other objects and he did paintings over 20 years using this theme.

"The Canberra paintings in this show continue this tradition, with reflections of clouds on Scrivener Dam, reflections of Mount Ainslie on the boardroom table in the National Gallery, reflections of the bush in the windows of Black Mountain Tower."

Sperling says Sayers began making observations about things that interested him, including the beauty of Canberra, when he created a public blog on the National Museum website in 2010 after becoming director.

"Canberra in winter reminds me of a Japanese painting. Morning mist. Mount Ainslie rising from cloud. The perfectly graduated sky at dawn. The gentle curve of the bridge over the lake," he wrote.

As well as Wright's poem, he also quoted from others captivated by Canberra's weather and sky including Arthur Boyd and Walter Burley Griffin.

But Canberra's landscape wasn't his only inspiration.

"Like many other Canberra families we have spent a lot of time on the South Coast of NSW, particularly around Bermagui, where we have a holiday home," Sperling says.

"It is here that Andrew painted many gouaches en plein air (painted in the open air in one sitting), capturing the ruggedness and geological beauty of the South Coast landscape that he loved so much."

A "different light and space" prevailed on the South Coast, Sayers wrote, where he was inspired "to paint the transitory phenomena of weather and the cycles of nature".

Despite his relatively late and sadly brief return to the art world, Sayers received recognition for his work in 2013 when he was a finalist in the Archibald Prize for his portrait of environmental lawyer Tim Bonyhady.

In 2014 the former National Portrait Gallery director entered a nude self-portrait in the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize.

His interest in portraiture continued.

As well as the Canberra paintings, Sperling says, in the last few months of his life he was working on a new self-portrait for the forthcoming 2015 National Self-Portrait Prize to open at the University of Queensland Art Museum on November 14.

Andrew Sayers' A Lens of Clear Air will be at Beaver Galleries, Deakin from November 5 to 29. For more information visit: beavergalleries.com.au.