Olley

Vale Margaret Olley, Australian artist who died on 26 July 2011 this week at the age of 88

(Cyclamens and Apples 2005)

(daisies and pears 1978)

She recently sat for a portrait by Ben Quilty, which won this year's Archibald Prize, here it is.

Olley was a figurative painter of great skill, who produced wonderful still lifes, which seem so old fashioned these days and yet full of life and light and substance.  What, really, could be more wonderful than a perfect bunch of flowers and a bowl of fruit sitting in the sunshine. 

(Poppies 2004)



(spare bedroom, 1970, which is at the Lismore Art Gallery)



She always struck me as a very determined person, not at all a flighty scatty artist.   And I love her food \ flower combinations.  Others include cornflowers and pomegranates, cliveas and mandarins and ranunculas and watermelon).

(Quinces and Marigolds 2005)

The older you get of course the more you can get away with saying what you want.  I love this quote of Olley's:

'I’ve never liked housework. I get by doing little chores when I feel like them, in between paintings. Who wants to chase dust all their life? You can spend your whole lifetime cleaning the house. I like watching the patina grow. If the house looks dirty, buy another bunch of flowers, is my advice.'

(from the biography by Meg Stewart you can read a review of this here).  

She certainly took her own advice because here she is in her studio:

The Sydney Morning Herald's obit is here. 

One of my ambitions in life, if you could call it that, is to reach such a ripe age, say what I want, paint what I want, and clean when I want (or not).

(all still life images from Eva Breuer)

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The Best Rooms of 2010...?

Australian House & Garden does a feature every year where they list the top 50 rooms of the year.  The 2010 picks have just been released.   There were quite a few which did not grab me at all as they looked too styled, too display home, or just a teeny bit ugly.  These are my five favourites:

 

You can see that I like white, clean and bright.  And this did get me thinking about this question: what exactly is Australian style?   

There is a lot one could say on this topic, one could mention our 'easy going' inside \ outside sunny lifestyle.   But that forgets of course that a substantial part of the south of the country has cold winters and even snow.   One could talk about how we love to use colour, but then what about all those lovely white and neutral interiors we see everywhere?  Or we could look at all the natural timbers and fibres we use, or our hard edged modern back extensions.  

My answer is much simpler, and harks back to the days of the Australian Impressionists who, inspired by the French, gathered at Heidelberg outside Melbourne to paint in what was then a radical new style.   They found that the light in Australia was completely different to the light in Europe.  It means that they had to adjust their painting technique and subject matter and colour to address the hard squinty brightness of the light.

This is illustrated by these wonderful works, all painted in the same year:

Charles Conder 'Herricks Blossoms' 1889

Arthur Streeton 'Golden Summer Eaglemont' 1889

(this is now an inner suburb of Melbourne)

Arthur Streeton 'Windy and Wet' 1889

I think this hits the nail on the head.  The light in Australia is different to the light in other countries.  It is harsher and brighter (and burnier, as I have found out at some cost).  This means you have to decorate and design differently.  You need shady spots, and you have to be careful with too much white.  It means that colours show through clearly and cleanly, so the shade of red which may look burgundy in a room in France is fire engine red here.  And that lovely white Swedish room may cause sun blindness here.

I know someone whose mother died in the 1980's and when they packed up her home they found an Arthur Streeton painting hidden under her bed.   Why would you hide the work of such a wonderful artist?    


(Images: (1)(5) Australian House and Garden (6) from the book 'Living the Modern - Australian Architecture) (7) - (9) from the National Gallery of Victoria)

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More Rooms in Art

I get a few emails about this post so I thought I would do another one.  

To kick off, Matisse, who invented the idea of the completely red room.  Personally I couldn't live with it, but I can see why people do rooms in this way.  For me, my red dining room is enough to be going on with, and even that room I rarely enter. 

The Red Studio (1911) 

This is a wonderful abstract art piece by Theo Van Doesburg called Counter Composition, painted in 1924.  Very radical for its time.

Its perfect match is this fantastic 1975 kitchen in a John Fowler house in the UK. I have seen red and black laminate kitchens but only rarely blue: 

(Warning: water restrictions rant coming up)

It is rainy and awful (still, again) here in Melbourne. We have floods all over the state and yet our water storage is still only at about 42%.   I can't work it out.  Is there a leak in the dams? I am told the main reservoir is very extremely ginormous and will take years to fill.  So now, after putting a dripper system in our garden and installing three huge water tanks four years ago when the drought began, I may just be able to start using my decommissioned sprinklers.   But there is really no point as we pulled up most of our lawn years ago.   And my water tanks are now overflowing. 

Anyway, I am not so sure about this David Hockney, but you cannot go past him for blue skies and shimmering pools which to me are the epitome of LA.   

Nick Wilder (1966) 

This is the Kauffman house at Palm Springs built in 1946 and designed by Richard Neutra.

And this, the Petrucelli house in Kew here in Melbourne by McBride Charles Ryan. 

To perfectly capture the misty waters of Venice, what better than Giorgione's The Tempest, painted in 1508, which is possibly the first landscape painting (where landscape is not just the background) in Western art.  only 6 works survive and he died of the plague at the age of 34.  Very little is known about him but the maturity and calm in his works influenced many Venetian painters including Titian.  Something pretty creepy is going on here. But no one has ever really been able to work out what. 

To accompany this work, a Venetian palazzo:

and an interior which seems to me to be very Italian in style and feel:

This work is by Ken Done, a designer and artist who was very famous in Australia in the 1980s for his almost Fauvist style vistas of Sydney Harbour.  He uses bright primary colours, which are perfect for any children's room. 

Happy weekend to one and all.  We are off to have Greek for dinner with the children tonight and tomorrow I am hoping to buy some lawn from the nurseries to plump up the nude bits in our garden, and also some more herbs and possibly some silverbeet.  

(Images: (2)(3) Elle Decor (10)(11) Lost sorry! (13) Design Sponge)

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Wandering about Whiteley

I have recently been spending a bit of time with a medical professional who has a reproduction of this painting in her rooms.

Brett Whiteley needs no introduction to most Australians, being one of the most successful, award winning and prolific artists of the 20th century.

This Archibald Prize winning 'Self Portrait' was painted in 1974.  That is the artist in the mirror.  Through the window to the left is his beloved Sydney Harbour and in the foreground a distorted odalisque in the manner of Matisse.   I could look at this painting for hours and hours.   Brett Whitely died, alone, of a heroin overdose in a motel near Woolongong in 1992 at the age of 53.  He flies in the fact of my visual artists live long lives theory.   

He said 'art is an argument between what a thing looks like and what it means'.

Here he is in the 1960s with his wife Wendy and their only daughter Arkie:

Arkie was a beautiful woman, creative and gentle.  She is famous for appearing as an actress in Mad Max, and for zealously guarding her father's legacy.  She died of adrenal cancer in 2001 at the age of 37. I remember seeing a story about her in one of my mother's Australian Vogues in the early 80's with a feature on her completely white and pastel apartment in London.  White and shabby chic long before everyone else started doing it.

The only one left in this little family was Wendy Whiteley.  She said this:

“you can go two ways with grief. I could have given up and slid into an abyss of depression, or become suicidal…..I just felt an overwhelming desire to do something positive…doing something creative, right here, would be the most freeing thing I could do”.

So Wendy created a garden at Lavender Bay in Sydney.  She planned and designed it and has cared for it for years now.   The garden is not hers, it is on public land.  But it is known to locals as Wendy's Secret Garden. 

The garden was overgrown and unkempt and filled with old railway parts and carriages.   This tree is a Moreton Bay fig, a wonderful climbing tree which is prolific in Sydney.  Willy wagtails, kookaburras and parrots chirp and chatter away whilst magical bendy paths go hither and thither.  This is secret Sydney at its best.  Surrounded by high rise buildings, a little place of peace.

How wonderful is her positive and creative approach to the vicissitudes and tragedies which life has thrown her way?

(Images: (1) Gallery of NSW (2) John Tranter.com (3) The Age (4)(5) Galeriaaniela.com.au)

 

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Winter in Melbourne - Art for the Hanging

If you spend a lot of time inside during winter staring at walls, not only do you go stir crazy, but eventually it comes to you that you should buy some art to hang.

And in winter, that means to me, landscapes.

I love the look of a landscape hanging in a pristine room, like this. In fact I just love everything about this room, but mostly its tranquillity and the fact that the painting is allowed to speak, without needing to shout. 

(via Remodelista)

This is Vincent D'Onofrio's 5 storey townhouse, decorated by Jan Eleni.  If you can't have a gilded mirror above your fireplace, I think a moody landscape does just as well, if not better. 

And these are some of my current favourite (living) landscape painters.  This is by Darren Gannon, represented by Libby Edwards.   The thing about landscape painting is that you cannot skate by on poor technique or low quality materials.  It really shows up your skills.  

Early Start  -  2010  (oil on canvas)

This is by Geoff Dyer, a very well regarded Tasmanian painter.    Aim high, and you too can have a Dyer.   He is not a cheap artist.   But look at the depth, and indeed, emotion of that stormy sea. 

Climate 1 (2009)

These little ones (not a triptych, maybe a nono-tych) are by Jennifer Shears and you can find them here on Etsy.   Aren't they exquisite?   All the different cloud moods are represented.  

This is by Alexander Mackenzie, an Australian artist about whom I have previously written.  

The Third Island (2009) 0il on linen

Here is another Jennifer Shears.

And these are by Swedish artist Peter Freis. I am indebted to Monika at Splendid Willow for alerting me to this wonderful artist. Born in 1947 (just like Geoff Dyer), he is represented by this gallery in Stockholm.   

I hope you all have a serene Tuesday.

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Local Antique Dreaming

Every now and then when doing a little on line window shopping I have a peep at this antique store, Miguel Meirelles.   I love everything about this shop: its facade, the fact that most of the stock is still in France, and the little bereted man taking photos who is occassionally reflected in the mirrors.  

But most of all I love the fact that this shop is not in the US, or Wiltshire, or the 6th Quartier, rather it is about 5 km up the road from me.   So it is not fantasy.  It is real. If I chose to I could get in my car, drive there, and buy these French banquettes and be back home in 15 minutes.  

These banquettes are something I have been looking at recently.  In a completely hypothetical way.  I have  nowhere to put them of course.  And really,  whilst they are suitable for 18th century perching near a fire, how often do we perch politely these days?  

 Really they should be in this home:

(Pio Ricci 'The Love Letter' 1875)

And they would work well in this kind of space - a pinky salon style living room.

Or maybe in a hallway, for resting between household chores.

Whatever their use, I think I love them because they perhaps are so useless. Delicate, and green, and a bit pointless. 

This weekend, some quince cooking, and some vegetable planting.   And lots and lots of sleep, if the Gods are on my side.  

(Images: (1) Meirelles (2) ThursdaysAntiques (4) Ludwig Design) 

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Epicerie Tote Bag by Maron Bouillie

I have been told by my children that my green credentials are inadequate.  The most significant of my failings is that I do not have a reusable shopping bag and instead allow the shops and supermarkets to ply me with plastic bags.   Are plastic bags the number 1 crime against humanity?   My daughter thinks so.  

A French 'artiste plasticienne', Maron Bouillie, makes bags imprinted with photos of wonderful French things. Like this bag, which I hope to use in place of the evil plastic.   Her (slowly loading) website is here. 

I found this in yet another website free shop, Ex Libris, located in Armadale. A glittering jewellbox of a store, it sells an ecletic mix of all things French, including Gien porcelain, and design books, and door knobs, an little crystal alarm clocks, and Tolix chairs, and so on. 

This is the reverse side of the bag.   I love the details - spice jars (!), lemonade bottles, little wooden drawers and so on. 

Maron Bouillie also makes little printed purses:

And this, my favourite, an Onion Bag:

As I was in the shop, buying something, I thought I may as well buy a couple of other things (oh fatal flaw in my personality). So I bought two other Maron Bouillie creations, firstly a little car bag for my son to store his super precious, dating from the 1960s, Thunderbirds 2 and 4, which I dearly hope will extend their lives.   

And for me, a little bag to store spare embroidery cotton.  

Is it just me, or am I seeing photos printed on absolutely everything at the moment?

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