Bush Flowers

While studying in the 1940s at the National Art School in Sydney, Margaret Olley worked as a scenic artist for theatrical productions. She noted that the actors were directed to walk on stage and count twenty seconds before speaking their lines. Olley realised that this was the creation of space and she transferred this understanding to her own artform. "Olley came to use the objects in her still life paintings as characters on a stage; objects both common place and beautiful turned this way and that, shuffled, changed by lighting, seem in shallow or deep space, creating an intimate scaffolding for the eye and mind to explore the intervals between them as well as the objects themselves." (B Pearce, Margaret Olley, Sydney, 1996, p 14)

From 1973 Olley's work became more optimistic as she moved away from heavier dark colours and started to produce paintings with a lightened palette and sparkling colour. Bush Flowers is a wonderful example of the success of this new direction with its lovely play between warm and cool colours.

"Olley's paintings....are celebrations of materiality. There is mystery enough for her in the sentuality of surfaces, the slender are a Turkish tea pot, the transient perfection of flowers, glints of light on glass or silver, the burning lemon, the pattern of banksias against an orange wall, not to mention the translation of these things into paint which takes on an inexplicable life of its own" (B Pearce, op. cit., p 15)