At 60, Perry Fletcher is not only Australia's greatest engraver, but a unique figure in this art form. Working on any medium from glass, gold and silver to granite, Fletcher the Etcher has mastered a freehand style that has transcended the limits of his contemporaries. His story really starts in the killing fields of Vietnam, where Fletcher as a national serviceman saw the horrors of war.

He came home in 1969 with two aims in mind: to win a premiership for his district footy club, the Vermont Eagles, and to calm his mind by creating a work of monumental beauty — a massive engraving on brass of Leonardo Da Vinci's Last Supper with filigree borders, 370 cherubs, 30,000 dots and ornate scrolls. To win the local premiership with Vermont by a point was easy by comparison.

Other feats of art and concentration followed, a certified freehand drawn perfect circle, a rendering of the 47-line Desiderata on a 50-cent piece sized pendant, the Lord's Prayer on a disc the size of a cigarette end.

But success and material wealth could not quell the demons of his war service, the ghastly memory of 10 weeks in a fox hole in a fire support base near Nui Dat, coming home in a Hercules transport plane with seven coffins in the middle of the night, hidden from society because of the backlash against the Vietnam War and Nashos.

“You had to walk off that plane and virtually back into society. The anti-Vietnam sentiment was so degrading for us all because we were national serviceman and we had done our job expecting at least to be thanked, and we weren’t. But it stirred my soul, it made me more determined to be the best artist I could be, to use my soul to how the Vietnam guys that you can get on with life — and many have got on with life,” he told Sunday.

Fletcher decided that the best way to deal with the demons of his war service was to celebrate his freedom and survival with acts of beauty and generosity.

“I just love giving, it’s a joy of mine and if you gave me $2 million I would probably give it back because I wouldn’t know what to do with it,” he said.

Fletcher has spent nearly 40 years exorcising his demons, but has found his greatest relief in using his art to spread a message of joy and fellowship. He donates artworks worth tens of thousands of dollars each year to raise money for his football club, Vermont and the Woodsmen the Collingwood Football Club’s coterie group. A vase he engraved celebrating 50 years since the Olympic Games in Melbourne recently raised $30,000 for charity.

Now living a tranquil existence on the Mornington Peninsular, Fletcher the Etcher is on threshold of producing his greatest work to date.

“I was very, very fortunate that God gave me a little skill and I made sure that skill was always there — especially in the early '70s when I was starting the Last Supper and I couldn’t settle down. I felt that one day a bubble had burst and I woke up again and that was related to the experience of peace to war and back, but now I am at peace with the world and I am moving on,” he said.

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