1941

* ‘Knowing the New South Wales ranges well, I have tried to paint them with stark truth, copying the natives in eliminating the Western idea of ‘time and place’. I know that art is of the mind and a picture a replica of the mind’s vision. A camera-mind produces a camera picture, and this type of mentality has never belonged to the Aboriginal’

(‘New development in Australian Art’. Australia National Journal, May 1941)

early 1940s

*‘Australian artists must feel inherently the difference between their land and that of others … the tremendous difference in our flowers … so our treatment of our flora must be different. If it isn’t then it is merely copy and repetition’.

(‘An inherent Australian art’ early 1940s)

Image: Margaret Preston 1940s (detail). Photograph by Max Dupain. Courtesy of Jill White

1942

*‘The change in the world situation of Australia, made by the war, will compel her artists to readjust their relationship to the art of the European continent and Great Britain . . .Australia will find herself at a corner of a triangle – the East . . .will be at one point and the other . . .representing the West. It will be in the choice of one of these corners that the future of Australian art will lie … Which end of the triangle will Australian post-war artists take?

(‘The orientation of art in the post-war Pacific’, Society of Artists Book 1942)

Image: Installation photograph of Art of Australia exhibition 1788–1941, at Yale University Art Gallery, USA, 1941. Photographer unknown. Preston archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales

1945

*‘When I’m painting flowers I‘ll pull one of its kind to pieces. I will know exactly how it’s formed. When I’ve done this I draw from another one – I do this with all my flowers. I make studies of them. I then put the studies entirely away from me and make my compositions’

(Australian Artists speak’ Radio 2FC 1945)

Image: Margaret Preston with gum blossom, Oenpelli, Northern Territory 1947. Preston archive, Art Gallery of New South Wales