Cool Eric Thake

Me again with artist portraits. Love this image by Sarah Chinnery of Eric Thake at the beach wearing striped socks.

| Sarah Chinnery, image of Eric Thake at Brighton Beach, c1955, State Library of Victoria |

Sketching away.

| David Corke, image of Eric Thake sketching in street, 1959 |

There is something about people looking in windows. This is the best.

| Rob Meers, image of Eric Thake looking in a shop window, 1964 |

Here is Eric in a beautiful self portrait from the 1970s. Those socks twenty years later. The bird book lovingly at his side.

He loved birds.

| Eric Thake, We saw the Orange Chat, 1974 |

Julia Ritson

Light Eric Thake

Back to happier times for Eric Thake.

A bright and breezy juxtaposition of images and ideas.

Eric wrote on the reverse of this painting “the sort of stuff the early Italians worked on, so George (Bell) told me.”

| Eric Thake, High and drying, 1934, image from Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle |

I imagine his tongue planted firmly in cheek with this one. The title was found in a dictionary under the definition for Nirvana.

| Eric Thake, Salvation from the evils of earthly existence, 1940, image from Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle |

Historian Mary Eagle got to interview Thake a year before he died in 1982 and found out that the propellers represent the twists of glass inside marbles.

Julia Ritson

Dark Eric Thake

The National Gallery of Victoria has this lovely Eric Thake watercolour, pastel, and charcoal drawing in their collection. Documenting, again, his presence in Alice Springs.

| Eric Thake, Night time, Alice Springs, 1945-47 |

It’s an unusual work for Thake. Grim Thake. Dark Thake. No humorous intent here. Long shadows of an artist sitting quietly in a dark room.

Thoughts of war.

It’s a beautiful linear work.

Same year we see the more quirky Thake.

Thake was friends with artist George Bell. George described this drawing. “Intensely personal, exquisite in refined colour and powerful in suggestion of grim reality, these pictures show him as the best war artist Australia has commissioned”.

| Eric Thake, Self portrait in a broken shaving mirror, 1945, image from Classical Modernism: The George Bell Circle |

Julia Ritson

Wartime Eric Thake

War gave Eric Thake the opportunity to travel. He traversed the country twice by train. Once to Timor and the other to Papua New Guinea.

Three wonderful sketchbooks document his journeys. At the end of the sketchbook, he writes a descriptions of his drawings for his children.

“The dead kangaroo sleeps in the mulga scrub on the plains in the Harts Range country, the spots in the sky are a flock of galahs or may be cockatiels.”

| Eric Thake, Dead Kangaroo in the Mulga, 1945, Sketchbook 3, State Library of Victoria |

“The picture of Alice was drawn on Anzac Hill looking south to the gap in the Macdonnell ranges. The birds are forked tailed kites: they soar and ascend in great sweeping circles.”

| Eric Thake, Alice Springs, 1945, Sketchbook 3, State Library of Victoria |

“After leaving Alice we passed Central Mt Stuart, a very smooth and symmetrical mountain set in a sea of spinifex, and that night arrived in the wide and dusty main street of Tennant’s Creek. Next morning sitting on the verandah of a café I asked Harry Ziggenborne, an old drover well known in these parts, if he’d let me do a sketch of him. “Go ahead” says he, “I’ve been through the mill”.

| Eric Thake, Central Mt Stuart across Spinifex Plain, 1945, Sketchbook 3, State Library of Victoria |

“That afternoon we arrived at Daly Waters, there is a big swamp here, a great place for birds; egrets, pelicans, ducks, cranes and eagles, and the black cockatoos looking like pieces of burnt wood perched in the trees. I only stayed here a couple of days and then went on to Gorrie, a few miles beyond Birdum, the southern terminus of the Darwin railway.”

| Eric Thake, Black Cockatoos in flight and at rest, 1945, Sketchbook 3, State Library of Victoria |

“There were some marvellous red anthills here, some looking like fat old men with beards, one like a Toby jug version of Queen Victoria, and several like a mother holding her baby. There was one about 10 feet high that looked like a tower of whispering children. I saw Jen (daughter) in quite a number of groups, but it was a still and silent Jenny.”

| Eric Thake, The Little Queen of the Anthills, 1945, Sketchbook 3, State Library of Victoria |

Lovely.

Julia Ritson

Witty Eric Thake

Many Australian artists have taken to the outback.

Including the multi-talented Melbourne artist Eric Thake. He had previously visited the Northern Territory on one of his trips as an Official War Artist (1944 to 1946).

Back on a holiday visit in 1952, he took these light-hearted images.

| Eric Thake, Australian Summer-time, 1952, State Library of Victoria |

Before Brett Whitely painted his million dollar painting, The Olgas For Ernest Giles, Thake snapped this image at Kata Tjuta (The Olgas) and titled it the Five Kneeling Pink Elephants of Ernest Giles. 

Both artists are referring to the Australian explorer Ernest Giles’ description of the monoliths in his book, Australia twice traversed: the romance of exploration, being a narrative compiled from the journals of five exploring expeditions into and through central South Australia and Western Australia from 1872 to 1876.

Don’t judge a book by its title because it looks like a really good read.

| Eric Thake, Five Kneeling Pink Elephants of Ernest Giles, 1952, State Library of Victoria |

Julia Ritson

Upper Middle Class Women

Progressive, unmarried, upper middle class women like Violet Teague and Una Teague were expected to get on with things. To make stuff happen.

This is what the practical Violet and Una did when they arrived at Hermannsburg.

Money was raised. The water pipe was laid and connected (it took 40 weeks), and a three acre vegetable garden was created at the Hermannsburg Mission.

A personal connection was also made with Namatjira and he had so much admiration for Violet Teague that he named one of his children after her.

| Image by either Violet or Una Teague of the Finke River, 1933 |

And the Namatjira legacy lives on.

Peter Tjutjatja Taylor, Along the Finke River, 2007 |

Julia Ritson

Desert Ladies

As Violet and Una Teague get closer to Central Australia, Violet creates some stunning abstractions using the colours and shapes around her.

Watercolour seems to suit the desert. You can’t imagine using something heavy like oil paint in this environment.

| Violet Teague,Untitled Desert Vista, Hermannsburg Sketchbook, 1933, State Library of Victoria |

| Violet Teague, Untitled Desert Landscape, Hermannsburg Sketchbook, 1933, State Library of Victoria |

| Violet Teague, Untitled Dead Mulga Trees, Hermannsburg Sketchbook, 1933, State Library of Victoria |

Julia Ritson

Outback Ladies

As Una and Violet Teague motored further into the outback, Violet continues to sketch.

| Violet Teague, Near Tieyon, 12th Camp, 1933, Hermannsburg sketchbook, State Library of Victoria |

| Violet Teague, Near Tieyon, 1933, Hermannsburg sketchbook, State Library of Victoria |

This photo comes from the Teague photographic albums at the State Library of Victoria. Unknown photographer but I think we can presume it was taken by either Una or Violet.

What a road trip.

| Car, 1933, photographed during Violet Teague’s trip to Central Australia, State Library of Australia |

Julia Ritson

Violet and Una Teague Set Off

In 1933, a year before Albert Namatjira met artist Rex Battarbee, the “can do” artist Violet Teague set out to visit Central Australia with her sister, Una.

Una Teague and artist Jessie Trail had visited Hermannsburg in 1932 and reported back to Violet about the deadly drought at the Lutheran Mission.

The sisters then planned a road trip and that’s the story of how they became advocates and fundraisers for the Kaporilya pipeline project to get water from the Kaporilya underground springs to the Hermannsburg Mission. The drought had taken the lives of almost a third of the indigenous people from around Hermannsburg. Some say the drought came about because the Mission shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

But either way the sisters raised more than two thousand pounds.

Una and Violet hired a car, a Studebaker, complete with a driver from a taxi firm in nearby Frankson and set out. Camping all the way.

| Violet Teague, 1st Camp Sea Lake, 1933, Hermannsburg sketchbook, State Library of Victoria |

It’s a long way to Alice Springs. Here they are in Brachina.

| Violet Teague, Branchina, 1933, Hermannsburg sketchbook, State Library of Victoria |

| Violet Teague, Flinders Rangers, 1933, Hermannsburg sketchbook, State Library of Victoria |

Violet was known for her oil portraits but I think I prefer the watercolours.

Julia Ritson

Violet Teague 1872-1951

When I was reading about Albert Namatjira, I found Victorian artist Violet Teague had a close connection to him.

I enjoy checking out artist portraits so as an introduction to the well travelled and philanthropic lady here are three lovely photos from The State Library of Victoria.

Love this jaunty one.

| Violet Teague, Raising the flag at Trawalla, Mt Eliza, 1940, State Library of Victoria |

Looks like the beret was her thing.

| Violet Teague, undated but circa 1929-1950, State Library of Victoria |

This photo is undated but looks like Violet is probably in her 70s.

| Violet Teague, Trawalla, Mt Eliza, undated but circa 1929-1950, State Library of Victoria |

Violet was renowned for her portraits and I particularly like this early self portrait.

| Violet Teague, Self Portrait, c1899, oil on canvas, from the Violet Teague catalogue |

Julia Ritson

Namatjira’s Sorrow

The dark Arunta,
Outlawed, outcast,
Seizes in pigment
The land he has lost.
Whiteman, arrogant,
Standing apart,
Masters the landscape
With guilt in his heart.
Prisoner and trooper
While we remain,
Each wears a handcuff,
Each drags a chain.

I came across this poem in John Ramsland’s essay Images of Albert Namatjira in Australian Popular Culture of the 1950s. The poem was written by a mysterious B.J.M. and published in the Overland journal in 1956.

And in the same year, William Dargie painted an Archibald winning portrait of Namatjira. Dargie’s seven other Archibald winning paintings were quite ponderous. I think this dignified Albert is one of Dargie’s better works.

| William Dargie, Portrait of Albert Namatjira, 1956 |

Artist Noel Counihan was a champion of free speech and made this allegoric linocut after Namatjira’s death in 1959.

| Noel Counihan, Albert Namatjira, 1959 |

Counihan was one of the few people who recognised Namatjira’s creation of an important new school of painting.

Julia Ritson

Never Paint Again

| Albert Namatjira, Flowering shrubs, detail, 1939 |

“Unless aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira overcomes his worries over white men he will never paint again. Mr Rex Battarbee said. Mr Battarbee was speaking after a remarkable display at his home, of contemporary aboriginal, and white men’s impressions of the Central Australian scene. Namatjira, the most famous of all black painters, was no longer as forceful as he had been, Mr Battarbee said. This was because he was feeling the impact of the white man too much – notably in the wrangles over the building of a house in Alice Springs. Namatjira said to me: ‘I paid more than £400 income tax last year to the Commonwealth Government, but that same Government prevents me from building my own home on my own land with my own money,’ Mr. Battarbee said. He told me definitely that he will never paint again if this state of affairs continued.” Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW 1888-1954), Tuesday 15 May 1951

Everyone was all over him. He was an insider and outsider. Loved and hated. Everything I’ve read and the images I’ve seen of Namatjira being paraded for all to see are achingly sad.

But I was speechless when I saw this.

| Australian Women’s Weekly 1950 |

Sorry, Albert.

Julia Ritson

Albert Namatjira’s Ghosts

My favourite Albert Namatjira’s paintings are the Ghosts Gum watercolours.

Many people liked Albert’s work although the important Gallery Directors saw the paintings as potboilers.

Well, I must like potboilers because I think Namatjira’s Ghost Gums are wonderful.

But I need to acknowledge Rex Battarbee’s influence. From what I’ve read he seemed like a very nice man and in effect his artistic impetus was usurped by Namatjira’s fame.

Here are a couple of Battarbee’s Ghosts from the Seeing The Centre, The art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959 catalogue.

 

| Rex Battarbee; Left – Gum trees in the Finke River valley on the way to Palm Valley, 1946; Right – Ghost gums, 1948 |

And Albert’s Ghost.

|Albert Namatjira, Ghost gum, c 1945-53 |

Beautiful photo of Rex Battarbee taken by Rennie Ellis in the 1970s.

| Rex Battarbee photo by Rennie Ellis, c1970 |

Julia Ritson

Albert Namatjira’s Chasms

One of the residents of the Hermannsburg mission in central Australia was Albert Namatjira. He showed a keen interest in Rex Battarbee’s watercolours. Rex taught him all he knew, including how to sign his name in the white man’s way, and the Namatjira show began.

When I look back at my photos of central Australia I think of Namatjira’s art.

| Kata Tjuta, Central Australia, 2006 |

To me Namatjira exhibits a most powerful depiction of land and of place. Namatjira repeatedly painted perpendicular walls of gorges at all times of the day in all sorts of light and from all points of view.

These images come from the catalogue for the 2009 Namatjira National Gallery of Australia exhibition, Seeing the Centre, The art of Albert Namatjira 1902-1959 written by Alison French.

The chasms are right up front and accentuate the equal emphasis he gives to all parts of the painting.

| Albert Namatjira, Redbank Gorge, MacDonnell Ranges, Central Australia c 1936-37 |

| Albert Namatjira, Talipate, Western MacDonnell c 1945-53

It’s kind of hard not to think of the other definition of chasm when contemplating Albert’s work.

Julia Ritson

Central Australia

| View to Uluru, 2007 |

My niece and nephew’s writing about their time in the USA got me thinking about our own central Australia.

Another spot in the world with mind-boggling earthly structures. I remember being quite hesitant about seeing this monolith and the centre of Australia for the first time.

I arrived by plane, but artist Rex Battarbee and fellow artist John Gardner travelled to central Australia in the 1930s in a T Ford converted into a caravan. They were heading for the spectacular MacDonnell Ranges.

Warrnambool born Battarbee met up with some of the Aranda (Arrernte) people at the Lutheran Hermannsburg Mission.

And so the story begins. The artists gave the wide-eyed young Mission children paper and pencils and some of the young ones tried to emulate the European style of Batterbee’s art work.

| Rex Batterbee at Finke River camp 1939, image by Gwen Tullo, from Seeing the Centre by Alison French, 2002 |

Julia Ritson

American Dream by Claudia Brennan

| America, image by Claudia Brennan, 2012 |

When the pilgrims arrived on the shore of the new world, they found a secularization of the Garden of Eden; a place that would give birth to a Dream that would soon permeate every facet of American society. The American Dream: the search for an elusive state of utopia stands alone in its capacity to function as a lingua franca that transcends race, class, gender, religion and time.

And although today this same dream may operate as a cognitive bias that allows Americans to withstand the trials of modern existence, it remains a distillation of hope that exists as the cornerstone of the national character. Each day, each venture, each person can, in America, be loaded with possibility. This possibility may be a promise of fulfillment and communion that never eventuates, but yet the optimism remains. Pursuits of beauty, truth, character, under the benevolence of the red, white and blue, allows everyday existence to become what Hunter S. Thompson would refer to as “a gross, physical salute to the fantastic possibilities of life in this country.”

The American Dream is an illusory conception of reality that imbues living in the nation with a quality of excitement that far outweighs anything offered by neighboring nations, and cements the United States’ status as a place that demands attention. If there is one thing that I have come to understand from spending time in America, it is why the nation is so loaded with iconography, patriotism and immortalized in mythology.

In the face of overwhelming nihilism, America serves you with a dose of optimism that is difficult to fight.

Claudia Brennan

Visiting America by Joseph Brennan

| America, image by Joseph Brennan, 2012 |

If there’s one thing that visiting America will teach you, it’s that there’s simply no other place like it. From the New World, to the frontier days and the beginning of industrial overhaul – this is a nation steeped in history so varied, it’s almost intoxicating to consider.

Nowhere else can one get lost in the garish excitement of Times Square, or be served by painfully hipster baristas in some cool new Williamsburg dive; then travel a few hundred miles north to the most tranquil surrounds imaginable. Nowhere else are there booming Gothams situated next to protected natural phenomena. Nowhere else has such a marriage of man and environment evolved in this way.

For if America is anything, it is an ongoing exercise in human innovation and sheer, unwavering grit – and we just can’t look away.

Joseph Brennan

Sleeping Cowboys by Claudia Brennan

Architects often favor incongruity with the surrounding environment in order to imbue their work with gravitas. However sometimes it is the ability of a structure to seamlessly insert itself into the landscape that creates a larger impact. The lines dividing the desert and the concrete are blurred in the construction of the Amangiri resort in Canyon Point Utah. Blurred to the degree that from afar, the structure is imperceptible, fading into the Entrada Sandstone that is the hallmark of the region.

| Amangiri resort in Canyon Point Utah, 2012, image by Claudia Brennan |

Three Arizonan architects, Marwan Al-Sayed, Wendell Burnette and Rick Joy collaborated on the project, choosing a 78,400 square foot expanse of raw desert and monolithic rock mesas to insert what Burnette referred to as their “block of cast earth – a sort of massive ruin eroded by the climate”. The consistency of the structure with the desert is so exact to the degree that the very makeup of the resort mirrors its surrounds, with its construction out a blend of concrete that utilized local sand to approximate the hue of the rock formations that function as the resort’s neighbours.

| Amangiri resort in Canyon Point Utah, 2012, image by Claudia Brennan |

The minimalism of the architecture is strangely not even incongruous with Southwestern lore, with the sandstone plinths upon which each bed lies positioned so that the sleeper is level with the landscape, to capture the “perspective of a cowboy sleeping on the ground”, said Joy. Amangiri ultimately proves the notion that softening the divisiveness of the ecotone carries greater power than a transplant of opulence into the rawness of untouched stretches of land.

Claudia Brennan

True Western by Joseph Brennan

Along the Arizona-Utah border, just off Highway 163 and deep within the Navajo reservation there lies a series of stratified plateaus, which sit like great fists of rock, pounding a docile plain.  It looks like something out of a movie, and it is.

| Glen Canyon, Arizona-Utah, image by Joseph Brennan 2012 |

The imagery of Monument Valley is synonymous with the concept of the Old West, and by the same token it is hard to see a photo of the vast sandstone buttes, and not picture a pioneer darting in between, shooting for the honour of some cowgirl in distress.

| John Ford’s The Searchers, 1956, film still |

John Ford directed no less than seven Westerns in these surrounds, most notably Stagecoach and The Searchers, both upgrading the formerly B-grade John Wayne. Beyond the exterior narrative of these films, filled with virtually mute female characters and stereotyped ‘Indians’, there is an underlying theme of the lone man dwarfed by both the majesty and deadly nature of the landscape around him. For Wayne may rescue his niece and dramatically carry her through the desert, but he is a mere speck in comparison to the looming mesas at his side. And therein lies the vulnerability of the protagonist that elevates Ford’s view of the Wild West.

| Glen Canyon, Arizona-Utah, image by Joseph Brennan 2012 |

Joseph Brennan

Utah Minutiae by Joseph Brennan

There’s something brewing in Utah’s deserts. It’s been developing like this for millions of years and yet, it must be witnessed on the most intimate level in order to be properly appreciated.

| Canyon Point, Southern Utah, image by Joseph Brennan, 2012 |

Within the great cliffs and plains of sandstone, and the greens of the Colorado River – snaking its way through Glen Canyon and upwards, to heave at the tired dam wall- there exists clustered ecosystems that have evolved and thrived in their way and continue to do so, as fast as ever. From afar, one is able to obtain a perspective so broad; the beauty of it is overwhelming. But when one concentrates their focus on the minutiae of the landscape, it becomes more clear that its splendour results from a sum of many discrete parts, and it is therefore easier to understand, as least in a visual sense.

| Canyon Point, Southern Utah, image by Joseph Brennan, 2012 |

Even in the winter months, while walking through patches of fading cacti, there isn’t a surrounding shrub or stone that doesn’t demand fascination and cautious inspection. From the very lightest layers of moss, to the trees desiccated by the Canyon sun – this is a land on the frontier of ecological change, down to the smallest weed.

| Canyon Point, Southern Utah, image by Joseph Brennan, 2012 |

Joseph Brennan