Deutscher and Hackett

‘…I can think of no other painter of the present time who orchestrates his or her themes with such richness as Margaret Olley. She is a symphonist among flower painters; a painter who calls upon the full resources of the modern palette to express her joy in the beauty of things.’¹

A beloved personality of the Australian art world for more than six decades, Margaret Olley exerted an enduring influence not only as a remarkably talented artist, but as a nurturing mentor, inspirational muse and generous philanthropist. Awarded an Order of Australia in 1991 and later a Companion of the Order of Australia in 2006, Olley was the subject of two iconic Archibald-Prize winning portraits (by Dobell and Quilty respectively) and honoured with more than ninety solo exhibitions during her lifetime, culminating in a major retrospective at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in 1997. Today her work is held in every major public collection in Australia, while the contents of her Paddington studio have been immortalised in a permanent installation at the Tweed Regional Gallery. Bequeathing a legacy as bountiful as the subject matter of her paintings, indeed her achievements are difficult to overstate – and reach far beyond the irrepressible sense of joy her art still brings.

A striking example of the still-life and interiors for which Olley remains celebrated, Still life with kelim, 1985 superbly encapsulates her lifelong practice of turning to the quotidian for inspiration, revealing the beauty inherent within the everyday rituals of domestic life. Here dark purple plums rest on a delft blue and white porcelain plate, apples are loosely scattered between a ceramic compote and bowl, while rustic Spanish vases and a flask are balanced by a tall, blue-rimmed jug brimming with freshly cut flowers – all arranged before a marble fireplace and upon a richly patterned kelim reminiscent of the exotic interiors of Matisse. Saturated crimsons and russets sweep across the composition, enveloping fruit, earthenware and textile in a luminous chromatic harmony counterpointed by the cool green-grey tones of the fireplace, while the commanding pedestal bowl and recurring rhythm of rounded vessels and fruit establish a quiet architectural balance beneath the painting’s effortless abundance. Yet such apparent informality belies the meticulous ‘orchestration’ that invariably underpins Olley’s compositions – a discipline directly informed by her experience of the theatre in 1948 when she assisted with painting the sets for Sam Hughes’ productions of Shakespeare’s Pericles and Cocteau’s Orphée (designed by Jean Bellette and Sidney Nolan respectively).
 
Paying homage to the great European masters of her métier – Vermeer, Bonnard, Matisse and Cézanne among them – Olley carefully choreographs the various components of her exquisite still lifes as though actors upon a stage, advancing the richly laden table towards the picture plane to gently compress pictorial space, while objects both commonplace and beautiful are shuffled this way and that until each vessel, blossom and piece of fruit assumes equal poetic significance. Leading the viewer’s eye through a quietly unfolding, deeply personal drama that resonates with the artist’s delight in her domestic surrounds, indeed each composition reveals the very essence of her identity; as Barry Pearce elucidates, ‘…to live with a Margaret Olley painting is to experience the transfiguration of a passionate, highly focused personality into art. In her paintings, the space surrounding each bowl of fruit, each vase of flowers, and through which the eye traverses a cacophony of surfaces such as patterned carpets, modulated walls, and cluttered tabletops, resounds with her presence. These are reflections of the things she loves, and which embellished the centre of how she prefers her existence to be.’²

1. Gleeson, J., ‘Introduction’, Margaret Olley, The Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane, 1964, n. p.
2. Pearce, B., ‘Margaret Olley Retrospective’, State of the Arts, Sydney, August – November 1996, p. 5

VERONICA ANGELATOS