oil on canvas
Signed ‘John Olsen’ and dated ’80 lower right, also signed
and titled on stretcher to the reverse
122 x 106cm
PROVENANCE
Bortignon’s Kalamunda Gallery of Man, Western AustraliaPrivate collection,
London
EXHIBITED
Festival of Perth Exhibition 1982, Catalogue number 26 (Property of the Artist)
“In July 1981 John Olsen and Noela Hjorth moved to the hamlet of Clarendon
in South Australia, about 30 kilometres outside Adelaide, where they had bought
an old rectory, ‘The Manse’. From the start Olsen recognised that
this environment, characterised by voluptuous rolling hills and a village atmosphere,
would have a considerable impact on his work, ‘This will mark a new period
in my life and work. Our house is like an eagle’s nest perched over the
village.
During the first eighteen months after their arrival, his investigations of the
landscape in his work were directed primarily to the broader context of the South
Australian landscape and his journey to North-West Australia. Olsen made frequent
visits to the coastal regions of South Australia, particularly Lake Alexandrina
where the Murray river meets the sea.
Many of Olsen’s landscape paintings of the 1980s recall the ideas expressed
in the works of the early 1960s: of the landscape as a living, pulsing organism
suggestive of animalistic shapes and biological forms; of landscape not as a
static factor but as process, not only seen but felt”.
REFERENCE
Deborah Hart, John Olsen, Fine Art Publishing Pty Ltd, Sydney, 2000, pages 152-153
