Noel Counihan's art was inspired by a profound political commitment from adolescence until death. This book is the story of a great artist's life, chroncling what it was like to be a choir boy in Melbourne during the 1920s; a teenage bohemian caught up in the struggle for civil rights during the Great Depression; and a staunch and active Communist in New Zealand in 1940 and in Australia from 1941 to his death in 1986. This biography reveals how Counihan's passion and sexual vitality were transformed into an art expressive of the suffering and endurance of working-class Australians whom he loved and of the hope he held for their future. It also reveals the way in which the representation of women in all aspects of life obsessed him to a degree unprecedented in the history of Australian art.