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An Artist Celebrates Life
The Age, Page 13, A3 1 May 2003
Ashley Crawford
Lake Eyre continues to inspire artist John Olsen, writes Ashley Crawford.
Standing on the edge of the wind-blasted Lake Eyre in late 2001, artist John Olsen flung his cane to the side. "Isn't this fantastic?," he cried, grinning broadly.
Olsen's cane was the result of surgery on his knees. Arriving at the William Creek Hotel in South Australia by plane, he was obviously in considerable pain. A day later, surveying the wilderness of Lake Eyre, he was rejuvenated and keen to get to work.
Olsen's rejuvenation has led to an extraordinary outpouring of work that was opened on Tuesday night by former prime minister Gough Whitlam at the Metro 5 Gallery in Armadale. At the age of 75, Olsen has created a fresh and powerful body of paintings. With the themes of landscape, seascape and food, he has created a hallucinogenic tsunami, a wonderful chaos of painterly anarchy and abstraction.
This is Olsen's first Melbourne show in nine years. It is also a group of work that explores his obsessions.
With such titles as Seafood Paella, The Tuscan Kitchen and Frog Damns, this is a show that celebrates the artist's life. Dominating the exhibition is a momentous ceiling work, The Source, a manic, anarchistic rendering of a swirling orb. At the same time, Olsen is also about to unveil a new suite of etchings, Sydney Harbour Seaport of Desire, at Port Jackson Press in Fitzroy.
The influence of Olsen's last journey to Lake Eyre infiltrates the latest body of work, although only a small number of paintings refer to the journey specifically.
"The principle difficulty was not to do anything like Lake Eyre," says Olsen. "I had to face the fact that I am in my own place, looking at things that have a centrality to do with everyday life."
The resulting works have a degree of minimalism. Olsen has often referred to the magic of the void that the desert supplies, and the void recurs in these works.
He describes himself as "only an accessory after the fact, the mind rather than instinct". "It's like looking at your life as a piece of clay," he says.
Olsen says notions of what is beautiful have changed over the centuries. "Beauty changes according to our perceptions."
Renowned for his landscapes and depictions of flora and fauna, Olsen has spent much time at Lake Eyre, where the apparently bleak and blasted landscape reveals an extraordinary array of life. "You gain more about it the more you know," he says.
In 1974, Olsen became intrigued by the changes occurring in the centre of Australia. Naturalist Vincent Serventy had seen Lake Eyre in flood and told Olsen of the dramatic transformation. The artist decided to accompany Serventy on his return trip.
While Olsen is well known for his imagery based on the landscape and on nature's abundant characters, his work is equally informed by his often-turbulent relationships, his beliefs, and by his personal struggles.
Born in 1928 in Newcastle, Olsen began his career as a freelance cartoonist for publications such as Man and Fashion Design. He attended the Julian Ashton Art School in 1950 and in 1955 held his first big exhibition at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney.
In 1957, Olsen travelled to Majorca and was transformed by the influences of European art and the Mediterranean. Back in Sydney in 1960, he began his first big work, Spanish Encounter. In the next two years he completed the You Beaut Country series.
In 1985, Olsen won the Wynne Prize for A Road to Clarendon: Autumn and was the subject of a key retrospective at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1991. Throughout his later career, Lake Eyre remained a passion.
In this age of abstraction and postmodernism, Olsen has stuck to nature as a subject.
While he has been described as a bon vivant, Olsen prefers the term "epicurean" - which describes someone devoted to the pursuit of pleasure. "It means making the best of one's life," he says. "To expect nothing after that life and to just enjoy the simple things."
John Olsen at Metro 5, Armadale, until May 18, Sydney Harbour Seaport of Desire, prints and drawings by John Olsen, Port Jackson Press, Fitzroy, May 2 to June 1.