Hi Abby! I found your blog post about Arthur Streeton’s piece ‘Fires On: Lapstone Tunnel’ really interesting. I thought your points about how the artist uses colour and structure to portray his views about the impending railway revolution and impact were very intriguing and accurate. I also think the vast contrast in the untouched side of the mountain to the left, which is very natural and rocky, as opposed to the right side that is much more built away at, also leaves room for the viewer to see how this railway revolution so quickly made an impact on the environment and landscape of Australia.
Hi Gavin! I really enjoyed your post about Sidney Nolan’s painting of Ned Kelly. It gave me a great insight into perhaps why he painted it in the obscure way he did, and the power of the colours he used. It would have been really great if you had also added an image of the painting though, as I had to look back on my notes to remember which painting this was. I enjoyed your description of his long fingers holding the gun barrel, however, and it gave great meaning to why he may have been painted that way!
Art and literature go hand in hand like sausages and mashed potatoes. They’re both great on their own, but they compliment each other wonderfully and create a happy marriage. Seeing an artwork after reading the literature that goes along with it helps add imagery and visualization that may not have been possible without it. Sure, we can create our own image in our head of the time, place, and storyline by using the descriptions and imagery in the text, but there is something so real and confronting about art that was specifically created to resemble the same period.
Children’s books are often illustrated with fairly simplistic artwork to help tell the story alongside the author’s words, and I feel that seeing art alongside a piece of literature is like the adult version of this. The imagination can run wild with the words on a page, but it can be very grounding and at the same time open so many other doors to see relevant pieces of artwork.
Sometimes, when a piece of literature is set in a time period or place that the reader isn’t familiar with, it can be difficult to really imagine it and feel the intended impact of the author’s words, and that is where pieces of relevant artwork really come into play, to help lift the writing up to another level where it can be even more impressive and moving. To be able to see an actual visual representation of perhaps what the author saw, or was envisioning, as they were writing helps to guide the reader to be a lot more empathetic with the piece, and provide much more commentary. There are sometimes no words to properly describe the beauty of a landscape, or the way people felt, and that is where art becomes helpful to literature. The relationship is flattering in the opposite direction also, however, as a great piece of art can sometimes become much more impactful alongside a piece of literature or writing that helps to interpret and offer an explanation to further an understanding.
Hi Evelyn! I really enjoyed your blog post, as it shows how such a simple place can hold such a big significance. I didn’t grow up in the same house my whole life, and I moved around a lot, so it is harder for me to find that connection to a “home”, however the way you described the warmth of the peeling paint and your parents growing older in the same place really helped me to see the importance. I hope you never have to see a day any damage is done to your home, as I can really tell how special it is to you! – Lilly 🙂
The Australian $10 note features two historical Australian authors who both had great influence on the development of Australian literature. One side features a portrait of the talented Banjo Paterson, the man who authored “The Man from Snowy River” and “Waltzing Matilda”, both of which have become some of the most popular and celebrated pieces of work in Australian Literature.
The opposite side of the note features Dame Mary Gilmore, a female author from Goulburn, NSW. She wrote extensively about many social and historical topics around the time, and for that, some thought she was controversial. The side of the note she is featured on actually shows two different images of the author, one of which is a portrait taken away from an old photograph of her in her young adult life. The other image, a figure towards the background of the bill, is a painted portrait by William Dobell of Dame Mary Gilmore. The portrait was painted in 1957 and depicts the writer in a much later point in her life, when she was about 92 years of age, and was commissioned by the Australasian Book Society to commemorate her birthday.
The portrait is significant, even just in that it was painted by the artist, because it shows that her influence was already notable and people recognized her for her work and wanted to acknowledge this. Dame Mary Gilmore was very forward in her socialist views and was somewhat of an icon for a lot of women for her time.
Additionally, the $10 note also features imagery of a country woman in what could only be the outback of Australia, presumably inspired by Dame Mary Gilmore’s writings, which is appropriate to the side of the bill that seems to memorialize the author and her significance to Australia, and it’s literature.
Judith Wright’s poem “Rockface” uses personification to give life to the mountains to help show the relationship between the people and the land. I have experienced a similar connection to a piece of land that Wright describes.
In 2011, my father passed away in one of the most beautiful places in the world, Machu Picchu, Peru, while hiking through the ruins. Being one of the oldest collections of traditional Inca ruins in the world, Machu Picchu could never be duplicated or replicated in any way. The thought of this worldly treasure ever being destroyed or damaged in any way breaks my heart, not just because of its cultural history and beauty, but also because of my personal connection to it.
I visited the site in 2016, five years after my father’s death, and was blown away by the breathtaking views of the mountains in every direction, and intricate ruins that were built into the land. Nothing could ever compare to the feeling of being up in the clouds on some of the oldest land in the world, surrounded by the history and culture from thousands of years ago. But mostly, there is nowhere else in the world I have ever felt the air and the atmosphere almost wrap around me physically and squeeze me tightly, as though it recognised me and was welcoming me. I felt like I was coming home to a place I had never been before. Sadly however, there has already been environmental impact from the outstanding number of tourists that visit the site each day, and the government has imposed restrictions in an attempt to preserve it, but there is only so much that can be done without closing it off entirely to the public.
It hurts me to think that there will ever become a day that I will be unable to easily go visit the site, admire its beauty, and feel the embrace of it, but it is unfortunately a possible reality. It is so bittersweet that sometimes, the most beautiful corners of the world are ruined so quickly once people get to experience it.
(Picture below taken by me of the Machu Picchu ruins 29/10/2011.)
Lilly Flack Literature Blog 