John Olsen

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John Olsen, ‘Lake Eyre: The Desert Sea’ March 26 – April 28

Opening night Friday 30th March 6:30pm

There are in our existence spots of time
That with distinct pre-eminence retain
A renovating virtue, whence, depressed
By false opinion and contentious thought
Or aught of heavier or more deadly weight,
In trivial occupations, and the round
Of ordinary intercourse, our minds
Are nourished and invisibly repaired.

William Wordsworth, The Prelude, Book XII

Remembering is an activity of mind that pictures the past – and reminds us that what we picture is the past. How would it be if we did not possess the capacity to image the past – and thus remember? Is it possible to imagine a mind constructed without this ability? How very different its experience of the world would be. Among things lost would be those ‘spots of time’ pleasurably associated with the past and representing friendships, admiration, respect and the general ‘education of the soul’. The mental activity called ‘recollection’ is loathe to let such moments escape – and the imagination weaves around them a net of thoughts and images which regularly come to mind.

How can the process of relaying memories to other minds by means of concrete words and images work? How does the artist or writer conjure up the right forms and capture the necessary nuances? How can experiences of inner mind be transferred into the public domain of art and literature? As a beginning, the precious ‘spot of time’ is associated with people, places, moods, sensations and ideas. Recurrent recollections have an uncanny tendency to develop their own reality – a sur-reality wherein words, images, ideas, objects and their contextual associations become inexorably linked, as they are in Olsen’s paintings and drawings where a lily pond can be seen as synonymous with a whole universe of biological creation and the paella-pan, or dining table, transformed into a welcoming landscape inviting conviviality among family and friends.

So it is that people, objects, places, contexts, colours and emotions trigger recollections and serve as symbols for those ‘spots of time’ which remain stored as fragments in the mind. Like archaeological sherds in a glass cabinet, they can be revisited and re-assembled. Insubstantial and non-experiential as a recollection is, it is frequently accompanied by a need to describe or picture it – to find a form that fits the gesture, tone or idea that lingers in the memory.

Such ‘spots of time’ have proved of great importance to Olsen’s creative life. In 2007 we find him returning to childhood memories of popping blue bottles on Bondi beach. His drawings frequently present sea creatures laid out on the table for inspection and inspiration. Such table-scapes are irresistible to Olsen’s cats, those frequently drawn companions that inhabit his drawings from way back in the Victoria Sheet days until now.

Olsen’s diaries, rich as they are in anecdotes, observations and recollections, confirm the importance of memories in achieving the ‘all-at-onceness’ of his vision. In July 1994 he was reflecting on the Kimberley which provided him with some of his most memorable images: ‘The Kimberley has a flavour about it where everything becomes magic, a sense of surreality where things appear larger than they really are. It is a place for painters, poets and musicians. Everyday I see something that seems entirely new – to be seen in a different way – individual objects are more firmly silhouetted. I shall return today to a decade when I was in the Kimberley with the Duttons, dear Mary Durack, Vin and Carol Serventy and of course Alex Bortignon. It’s the wet and I see a bird, red-capped with huge feet that can walk on lily pads, and popularly known as the Christ-bird. Lily-trotters are more properly called jacanas. Tree frogs have pads on their hands and toes so that they can miraculously hang on wet leaves. There are spoonbills with their beaks going backwards and forwards dredging the rich porridge from the water’s bottom and sheets of drenching rain.’

Other memories relate to his teachers. Olsen remembers how Godfrey Miller would make little sketches during life-classes – first warming the paper by the radiator. His classes were serious, silent, interrupted only by the sound of paper being torn or the scraping of palette knives. Here the memories include an auditory dimension. After reading Seamus Heaney, Olsen made a note in his diary of Eliot’s theory of the ‘auditory imagination’: ‘The feeling for syllable and rhythm penetrating far below the conscious levels of thought and feeling, invigorating every word, sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back, fusing “the most ancient and the most civilised society”. Rembrandt’s tones do that, they send us right back to cave paintings, they reverberate against the ancient soul. ‘ The beginning of everything.’

While, as the drawings in his exhibition indicate, Olsen is prompted by the sensations and delights of each day, he also remembers the long dark shadows of early morning, black birds scudding over wet grass, shadows of crows on the trees and an old dog chewing a juicy bone over the same wet grass. His memories, like his paintings and drawings, reverberate with the Ying and Yang of a long and creative life in which his imagery captures those moments that live on through the richness and vivacity of his art.

Olsen has declared: ‘You have to be a certain age to look at the past … I’m looking towards an uncertain future, but I’ll travel with it!’ And that he does with characteristic wisdom, generosity, optimism and boundless creativity.

View the Olsen Hotel in South Yarra: www.artserieshotels.com.au/Olsen/

Related Books

Jasper Knight: Macmillan Mini Art Series Number Two Criss Canning: The Pursuit of Beauty John Olsen: Teeming With Life Lake Eyre: A Journey Through the Heart of the Continent Tim Storrier: Macmillan Mini Art Series Number Four John Olsen: His Complete Graphics 1957-2005 (Limited Edition) John Olsen: His Complete Graphics 1957-2005 (Limited Edition) John Olsen: His Complete Graphics 1957-2005 William Creek & Beyond (Limited Edition)