Oil on linen
Signed “YELDHAM” lower right
153.0 x 127.0 cm
Over the past four years I have painted in
the remote northern corner of New South Wales - three hundred kilometres
from Broken Hill.
Not far from my campsite there is a gravestone with the name Eliza Kennedy
carved into it.
I was told by a local windmill builder that Eliza had been a young girl, a
prostitute, at the turn of the century. She lived alone down by the waterhole,
spending her nights with the stockmen and boundary riders who worked along
the dingo fence which lines the sand dunes. She unfortunately died of fever
- cruelly abandoned by the stockmen, who were afraid of catching a disease
- and her body was discovered by a travelling clergyman from Broken Hill.
Back in my Sydney studio, the more I paint her the more I become fascinated
by her solitude, her inner world that detached her from the hardships she endured
with the stockmen. Maybe it’s because we both shared the same waterhole.
We know what it ’s like to fill our buckets with water and carry them
through the eucalyptus trees.
Eliza Kennedy: The Wedding Tent is an abstract painting of the waterhole she
walked to each day. In the background, above the rocks, lies her wedding tent
abandoned in the desert.
