David is in love with Russia. He has visited once or twice a year since 1993 lecturing in MGU's Faculty for Foreign Languages, as a guest of Prof Svetlana Ter-Minasova. He is the Founding Member of MGU's Australia Club. He also regularly lectures in the University of Psychology and Pedagogics, and MGU's Faculties of Law, and International Studies. He has also lectured to students of diplomacy, and theatre and film studies. He has lectured in the Great Hall of the Lenin Library, the House of Scientists, and often in the Chekhov Cultural Centre. He has recited poetry in the Bogolubov Library of Arts, the House of Literature, the Tsvetaeva Apartment-Museum, the Turgeniev Library, and many other venues. He has written theological papers on the Russian Orthodox Church and been active in their, and other's, children's charities.
His recent lecture topics in Moscow include: "D. H. Lawrence and the Senses", "Irish Mysticism and W. B. Yeats", "The Origin of Nursery Rhymes", "Noetics and Memory", "Sex and Love", "Love as a Psychological Principle", "Observation and Nature", "The Artistic Experience", "The Word and Poetry", "What Do Women Really Want?". He works closely with Kate Vikhrova as she translates six of his recent manuscripts into bi-lingual versions. They are collaborating on a series of stories based on his paintings of faces in the Prospect Mira metro.
In the late 1990s he was badly beaten up in eastern Moscow by some Azerbaijanis and Chechens. The injuries resulted in many surgical operations in the last decade and have limited his mobility so he has devoted himself to writing and painting about his profound joy and finding deep lasting friendships in Russia.
Although David Wansbrough is mainly known as a painter, philosopher and poet, he has other interests. For 22 years David Wansbrough has been the Co-Patron of the University of Sydney's China Education Centre with Sir Herman Black, and Dame Leonie Kramer. He is on the executive of the Australia's New South Wales Council of Christians and Jews, and organised the first festival of Islamic and Jewish poetry although he is neither a Jew nor a Muslim. He was the Director of the Australian Institute of Contemporary Studies 1979-1983. David Wansbrough was interviewed by the ABC in 1983 as Australia's Unsung Hero for his work in prison reform. He is the Patron of Regenesis, a social therapy program for street kids, and an honorary Life Member of Christophoros House, a Rudolf Steiner community for the aged. He has been a board member of the Australian Nordoff-Robbin Music Therapy Center, and of Miroma, a day therapy program for adults in need of special care. He is currently deputy chairman of the Australian Friends of the Biblioteca Alexandrina, Egypt. For 21 years he was an executive director of the Arunta Group of Investment Companies, and the chief executive of the Gavemer Foundation. He has been a director of Scitec, and chairman of MOA Pty Ltd.
A widely exhibited painter, he has had 26 solo Art shows in Paris, Sweden, Japan, Australia and the USA. He is the author of many books, including: "On the Lip of the Pit", "Seeing Through", "Dreams Delights Fears Fragments", "Poetry for a Human Centered Education", "Word Weaving", "Whispers" (published by the University of Sydney's CEC), "Moscow, A Journey into the Heart", "Festivals Seasons and the Southern Sun", "Christianity -- An Impulse of East and West","Bulgakov's Migraine". His novel, "Pillar of Salt", was adapted for the stage by Michael Burton, and has toured internationally, being awarded an Albert Einstein Academy Medal. His friendship with the young genius Aaron McMillan resulted in the symphony orchestral composition, "An Age Surf Tumbled", and 25 improvised piano works based on Wansbrough's poems read by Tom Burlinson, released days before Aaron's death.
©2011 Photos by Sergei Tarasov
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