Sea Change
Vogue Living Australia September/October '07
Susan Westwood
Artist John Olsen turns his attention from the outback to the beach in his latest works.
On the eve of his 80th birthday, John Olsen sparkles with excitement as he reveals he has been realising some new paintings. “I’m in love again,” he says, referring to two vast canvases he’s been working on in his studio over the last three months. They evoke, he says, “memories of being brought up at Bondi and around the harbour. There is such a kind of myth in Australia of being born under the sun.”
In contrast to the ochres and terracottas of many of his most famous paintings, Olsen’s decision to revisit his childhood by the sea has brought with it a new, unexpected colour range. “It’s different colours,
suddenly blues, greens, offshoots because the bluebottles are that purply blue … a whole range of things takes place: there’s not a bloody gum tree in sight.”
He picks up a brush and a cloth and applies dry paint to one of the canvases, depicting the waves of Bondi. “When I put biscuit-like paint over a dry surface, it’s a kind of technique Monet used for his water
lilies. Now I’m adding some blue, as this gives a better vibration.”
This immensely cultured artist, one of the most original interpreters of the Australian landscape, points out how infrequently his latest subject has appeared. “What I’m doing now – and I’m still voyaging with it – it’s
never appeared in Australian art. I think that’s really extraordinary because there is the mythology of our relationship with the sea, what’s living in the sea, the sun, the freedom, all that kind of thing.”
The other moment Olsen embraced the sea so quintessential to Sydney’s character was much earlier, for Salute to Five Bells, his 1973 mural for the Sydney Opera House, (inspired by the Kenneth Slessor poem).
Vistas of waves foaming over rocks and the sweep of Bondi beach offered inspiration, as did childhood memories. “The harbour has cliffs on one side, cliffs on the other, it’s like a bath and the light radiates down into that,” he says. “It’s fantastic, that feeling of light
and air, incredible stuff.”
- Susan Westwood
- Photographer: Murray Fredericks
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