"Louis Kahan's portraits of Australian writers stand tall in the great tradition of intellectual homage: direct, well observed, economical, even brusque. Their confident sketchiness is a tribute to the informality and freedom of the sitter, while the robust forms express the thinking fortitude of a mind that works a theme from fugitive ideas to monumental works of literature."

Robert Nelson, art critic, The Age, 2002

"Portrait painting at its best, using analysis and imagination, is possibly the most difficult branch of art, because each of us has a mask. Trying to penetrate to the reality behind the mask is the interesting thing"

Louis Kahan