Margaret Olley: A Life in Paint © ATOM 2012 A STUDY GUIDE BY MARGUERITE O’HARA http://www.metromagazine.com.au ISBN: 978-1-74295-188-1 http://www.theeducationshop.com.au Yellow Room Great art picks up where nature ends. – Marc Chagall introduction Margaret Olley: A Life in Paint is an intimate one-hour documentary about one of Australia’s best-loved painters. A well-known figure from the time she was painted by William Dobell in 1948, Olley’s celebrity status tended to overshadow her life as a painter. This documentary puts Margaret OIley the painter on centre stage. Many believe her last works – those painted in the eighteen months leading up to her death on 26 July 2011 – were amongst her finest. SCREEN EDUCATION © ATOM 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION 2 Synopsis: Margaret Olley, an Australian painter, died in July 2011 – aged 88 – as she was putting the finishing touches to what would be her final exhibition. She was a remarkable artist and a generous supporter of other artists. This documentary gives viewers an insight into the life and work of this greatly admired Australian painter through the recollections of those who knew her and were familiar with her work. We see Margaret Olley painting and talking about her work Place Clockwise from top left: Kilim Rug and Pomegranates; and learn about her early life and the Emeritus Curator Olley kitchen; Olley living room artists who influenced her distinctive Barry Pearce calls the Sydney house in which style. Much of the film – including Margaret lived ‘the interviews with her friends and with inner sanctum’ and paintings; we see her working on some of these Olley herself – is shot inside the it is the house that works in the latter years of her life. As with any Paddington house in inner Sydney is the starting point study of the work of an artist, background, experi- where she lived and worked for so for the documentary. ences, influences, surroundings, environment and She bought Duxford temperament all contribute to the nature of the many years. The house itself is more Street in 1964. It was than just a place to work; it embodies work, but with Margaret Olley the place where she a large Paddington worked for so much of her life is integral to the and reflects a great deal about the terrace with an annex subject matter and style of her paintings. artist herself. previously used as a hat factory. Between Unlike many of her contemporaries, she followed the ‘hat factory’ and her own path, not experimenting with or trying out the main house was Curriculum Relevance different subjects and styles. This is not to suggest a kind of transit area that her output was ever flat or repetitive; rather her Margaret Olley: A Life in Paint would be an with bedsit room and paintings are variations and approaches to com- excellent film to show to middle, senior and small kitchen and posing light-filled pictures from many different per- tertiary students working in Studio Arts and Design bathroom. The rest spectives and angles. The colour and vibrancy of was rented out to subjects. For students interested in the history and her work is quite astonishing, as is the fact that she 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION development of Australian art, the work of Margaret create an income. That was literally putting the finishing touches to pic- Olley has a special place. The film would also be room, first painted tures for a new exhibition when she died in 2011; a valuable resource in teaching Film as Text or blue and then yellow, in Betty Churcher’s words, her ‘obsession’ to paint in English classes as a biographical study of an would become her ‘carried her right the way through’. In the words artist’s life and work. muse and the subject of artist Ben Quilty: ‘her paintings were becoming of what Barry Pearce translucent almost like her skin – there were just In this film, Margaret Olley and her friends describe calls ‘her greatest layers that were coming through and they became and demonstrate her method in creating her vibrant masterpiece’. more and more beautiful towards the end’. 3 PEOPLE APPEARING IN THE FILM: • Margaret Olley artist • Barry Pearce Emeritus curator of Australian Art at the Art Gallery of NSW. (Emeritus means retired from a The Director’s Statement position but entitled to In her statement about making this documentary, director Catherine Hunter acknowledges the retain an honorary title challenge of ‘telling another story about Margaret Olley and making it fresh’. The title of the film of the position held Margaret Olley: A Life in Paint clearly shows the emphasis of the film – exploring and honouring by the person before the artwork. The work is presented within the context of her life and the places where she retirement.) painted – often her house in Paddington. • Ben Quilty artist • Philip Bacon gallery owner and curator Background And those days, the Depression was on. There was • Betty Churcher no money. We were living in the country. You made former director of The Margaret Olley your own amusement. We rode across the river, National Gallery of June 1923 – July 2011 picked up by the school bus and went to school in Australia and author Murwillumbah. Read the following excerpt from a transcript of a • Christine France art 2007 ABC television program – Talking Heads – I remember the whole of my school week seemed historian and author where Margaret Olley talks about her childhood to gravitate ‘round the art class. And when I • Cressida Campbell and becoming an artist. left school, my mother would have loved me to artist become a nurse. Can you imagine! I think I would Many of the people My earliest recollections of living in Tully, in north have killed a patient. But she said, ‘Send her to art appearing in the film not Queensland, were the sounds of the rain on Mt school.’ only had a professional Tyson. You could hear the roar as it approached – relationship with Margret louder and louder. My mother would have time to It was wartime. As soon as I came down to Sydney Olley but became her run out and take the washing off the line. and discovered what I really wanted to do, I just friends. This gives a took off. All I wanted to do was to be involved with particularly affectionate My mother Grace had been a nurse and my fa- painting. Being at Sydney Tech during the war, it intimacy to their ther, Joseph, he was a farmer. I eventually was old was very hard to get models. So, quite often we’d recollections. enough to go to school and we had to ride across have to take turns at being a model. the Tully River ’cause when the river was swollen, you’d have to swim the horses across with your little The painter William Dobell said he’d like to do a 2012 © ATOM SCREEN EDUCATION feet above the saddle. I can always remember that. I portrait of me. I was about to go up to Brisbane think I must have fallen off a horse a couple of times. for holidays before I left for overseas. He did a few little drawings, one quick one, then he did a very Then I was sent to boarding school at the age of detailed drawing. I never saw the painting until I six, in Townsville. It certainly cuts the umbilical cord came down from Brisbane with news that it had and makes you independent. Then we went down won the Archibald Prize.1 to live on the Tweed River. I think that’s when my L–R: Christine France; Olley palette childhood really began. 4 Cezanne, Velasquez and Bonnard seen in Student Activity 1 some of her pictures of urban landscapes and of the Newcastle area? Being the subject of two • Why do you think Margaret Olley be- Archibald prize-winning paintings lieved that a painting was never truly finished and could always be reworked, rather than In 1948, William Dobell won the Archibald prize for abandoned? his portrait of a young Margaret Olley. In 2011, Ben Quilty won the Archibald for his portrait of a much Establishing her distinctive older Margaret Olley. style and subject matter • What was the critical and public response to I would gather the flowers and they were in the room the 1948 Dobell portrait? that I was in so it was part of the room. People aren’t • How does Margaret Olley describe the effect always at hand. – Margaret Olley the publicity had on her as a shy twentyi-five year old? Unlike many artists today, Margaret Olley mostly • What do artist Ben Quilty and writer Clive painted colourful still life paintings and intimate James say about the effect on Margaret Olley interiors. She was not captive to the changing of the early celebrity and controversy created fashions and movements of the art world, mostly by the 1948 Dobell portrait? choosing to paint domestic interiors of her immedi- ate surroundings. Her subjects, including com- ‘Just forming my handwriting’ positions of flowers, fruit, bottles, plates, fabrics, – Margaret Olley furniture and surfaces, are suffused with colour and light. While perfectly composed, plants and fruit of- • Who were some of the artists whose work Olley ten appear to tumble off the dish on to the canvas saw when she travelled overseas in 1949? or board on which they are painted. This quality of • What does Barry Pearce suggest was the ef- being beautifully jumbled and absolutely alive was fect on Olley’s work as an artist when she saw also reflected in the spaces where she worked.