|
|
|
|
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 |
|
|
|
|