JOHN Olsen, one of Australia’s most acclaimed artists, who was known for his distinctive depictions of landscapes and nature, has died at age 95.

He died on Tuesday surrounded by family, the “Sydney Morning Herald” reports.

The Newcastle-born painter’s career spanned more than 60 years, with his work exhibited in galleries across the nation and overseas, and he was a winner of the Archibald, Wynne and Sulman prizes.

Among his acclaimed works is “Salute to Five Bells”, which hangs in the Sydney Opera House. A tribute to his long career will be beamed on to the building’s sails next month during the Vivid Sydney festival.

He was a giant who never lost the twinkle in his eye, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in an online statement on Wednesday.

“A man of talent, charisma, generosity and humility, he was a poet of the brush, a truly great explorer and interpreter of the Australian landscape. We were so lucky to have him,” he said.

His children Louise and Tim Olsen said their father was a bon vivant and raconteur known for his quick wit and rakish beret.

“Our father was a titan of the art world and beloved by many in Australia and overseas but to us he was Dad, in all the wonderful humaneness, complexity and humanity that word encapsulates,” they said in a statement.

Olsen was still painting in his studio on Saturday.

“Painting was our father’s life and he was painting right up to the last in his studio, with friends calling in to see him which he always loved,” his children said.

Olsen spoke to AAP in 2022 about his affinity with rural and remote Australia, having long captured its wild terrain.

“To be an Australian landscape painter is to be an explorer,” he said after donating several of his works to a regional NSW gallery.

“There is so much to look at and observe about the Australian landscape, how it varies from tropical to the coastal fringe, and the interior.

“It’s so multiple. It’s a beautiful animal, that landscape.”

After receiving an Order of Australia award in 2001, Olsen described art as a form of compulsion, which he started developing at age four.

“Artists are born, not made,” he said.

Olsen received numerous other awards in his long career, including an OBE in 1977.

He won the Archibald for “Self Portrait Janus Faced” in 2005, the Wynne Prize for “The Chasing Bird Landscape” in 1969 and “A Road to Clarendon: Autumn” in 1985, and the Sulman Prize for “Don Quixote Enters the Inn” in 1989.