HELEN MAUDSLEY

Kelly Gellatly: Helen, warmest of thanks for agreeing to chat with me this morning and for welcoming me into your home. Before we get things underway, I’d like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the unceded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nations and pay our respects to elders past, present and emerging. Given that you are the first senior Australian woman artist that I am interviewing as part of this new series, I’d also like to acknowledge and celebrate the important role that Indigenous women have played, and still play today, in the continuation of culture and community.

Now, what I’m hoping to do today, is to discuss your life and work. Not so much an in-depth analysis of the work itself, although we’ll certainly touch upon that, but how your career has been shaped and developed, and how the circumstances and stuff of life, and the art world, has influenced who and what you’ve become as an artist. There’s certainly a lot that others can learn from you as you enter your 94th year, with an exhibiting career of over 78 years. 

So, if we could go right back to the beginning …

You were born in 1927 and grew up in a middle-class family in the Melbourne suburb of South Yarra. Can you tell me a little bit about your family and childhood?

Helen Maudsley: Well, my father was a psychiatrist, and my grandfather came out to Australia in – I don’t know, 18 … whatever, 90 something or other [1888]. And he started off the Royal Melbourne Hospital, and then he was knighted for work during the First World War. So, he was very, very eminent. And my grandmother [Grace Elizabeth], her first surname was Stretch, and she was Bishop Stretch’s sister. He was the Bishop of Ballarat I think, or Bendigo, I forget which. She was very well educated, which was unusual for women in that time, and she was one of the first graduates of the Melbourne University … and she was very musical.

In those days they used to have open afternoons. And my grandmother used to have [one] every second Sunday – it was like a salon, and people would go, and there would be food and conversation and all that. And she was she was a pianist too, my grandmother. And there was the occasion before I was born, but I've heard of it … and my sister Ann, and my parents used to go to see granny and grandfather every Sunday. And on this Sunday, Ann, aged, about two and a half, three – she was hanging on the gate, and Rupert Bunny came to the salon, and he said to Ann, ‘What's your name?’ and Ann said to him, ‘What's yours?’ And Mister Bunny said, ‘My name’s Bunny’, and Ann said, ‘My name’s cat’. So that’s the sort of thing. Everybody of note, you know, went to the Maudsley’s salon. They lived right at the top of Kensington Road, next door to the place where McCubbin used to live. So that's interesting too.

KG: And, and your parents?

HM: Well, my father was a psychiatrist. And my mother [Sophia (Sophie) Helen McCall] was Scottish. I mean, in those days, you did ‘good deeds’ … like, one of the jobs every Monday – there was a meeting at our house of about seven people, and they rolled bandages for the hospitals. There were those sorts of things – see what I mean? So, Mum was very much into doing all these things.

KG: And siblings? So there was yourself, and Ann, who was older?

HM: Yes. Ann was three years older, then my younger sister Emily was five years younger.

KG: So, art and creativity was a big part of your family life, your childhood?

HM: Well sort of, yes.

KG: Now, I've read that you spent a year – this is really going back … bedridden at the age of twelve, with osteomyelitis.

HM: That’s right, I did. And the thing is, the leg had to be to be horizontal for a whole year, so of course when it got up it was terribly odd [laughs]. But that was a very salutatory thing for me, because of the age. And I did school, sort of by correspondence, as it were, but it’s not the same, you know. But when I went back to school, they put me up into the same class which I'd left; so, I missed a year, but then I was put in the same one. But the virtue about that was that I had to work very hard to get up to speed really with everybody else. And as you know, or perhaps you haven't encountered it yet, but 13 and 14 is the worst age for children because they try and make fools of the teachers and all this stuff, and adore it. And yet, at 14 it seems to get more serious again. So I missed that area of smart arsing and doing all that stuff, because I had to get my head down to get up to standard with everybody else.

KG: When you were at home for that year too, it strikes me that, you know, it's also an interesting period for a young woman because you're not quite a child and you're not yet a teenager.

HM: I know, I know.

KG: How do you think – work aside, do you think it affected you at all, just that sense of isolation?

HM: No, I always had something to do. And I guess drawing was my path because it was easy, you know, you can do it. But no, well that was just there … It was before penicillin, you see. I mean these days, if you get osteomyelitis penicillin fixes it like anything. But it was before any of those diseases.

KG: And I suppose that period, did it help you kind of live in your imagination? Were you good at that as a child?

HM: No, I was never in a fantasy world.

KG: You learnt both music and painting from the age of 13.

HM: Yes, well I mean, that was my difficulty. I wanted to leave school at 15, because I could have – that was the age that they took people at the Gallery School. But wisely, my parents wouldn't let me. They said, I must stay and matriculate, and they said if I matriculated well enough, well then, I could go to the Gallery School. But in the meantime, I had the music. My main subject was the flute, but I also played the piano. But the girl at school, who played the piano and played sometimes for me – we were sort of friends, well she got, for the end of year, you know, music thing, she got 96 and a half, and I got 96 and a quarter.

KG: Oh, my goodness.

HM: So, there you were, you see. And then, I didn't know because I was two ways pulled, you know, with the art thing and the music thing, so for the first year after I left school I did both, which was a terrific burden, and something's got to give – you know, you can't go on like that. So, I decided, because in those days there was very limited music written for the flute, and I knew it all – I’d done it all – also, you've got to have an accompanist for when you're there. And the third thing was, I felt – you know how in an orchestra you had to have the woodwind, and in a long piece it goes for say 20 minutes and you do nothing and then suddenly you've got to go … [makes the sound of playing the flute] … and you've got to get in the right pitch, and you've got to make the right tone, and you've got to mesh, and I felt like I couldn't do that. So, I gave up the music bit and did the art bit.

KG: And did you continue to play for yourself?

HM: No, because you see you’re only as good as your last performance, your last practice, with music. I mean if you don't play for a month, you've lost half your facility, and it would take ages to get it back. And there's no point in playing just by yourself. So, that was the end of that.

KG: All that work!

HM: Well, it was the greatest gift, because I've always been interested in music, and am still interested in music, and it's been marvellous. 

KG: Do you think they enriched each other … both the art and the music?

HM: Look, I'll tell you one thing that I think it's done, for me, I found, you know how you get chords, with 1-2-3, well, in a sense, I’ve put that into the art bit. You see what I mean?

KG: Absolutely, yes. 

HM: And it's been very easy for me to get a triad … I mean everybody can get a triad of light, medium and dark, but I could get triads of anything to anything. And I think that was something that not many people were even aware of in the art bit. So, there's those sorts of things. 

KG: And do you think that plays out in your interest in relationships and the sort of interpersonal in the work, that you can get a harmonious relationship, or you can get a discordant one?

HM: Yes, I suppose so.

KG: So, you go to the Gallery School, and who …

HM: It was [Charles] Wheeler. Because I had a facility in drawing, I just did two terms in the Drawing School and then went to the Painting School. That was just because I had the facility already. 

KG: And when you were doing drawing before the Gallery School, who were your teachers?

HM: Oh, Jimmy [James] Quinn.

KG: So you started at the Gallery School in 1945 …

HM: I exhibited at the Victorian Artists Society, and I got even a notice, and that was when I was still at school.

KG: And that was ’42, I think, something like that.

HM: Yes, and it was a great encouragement.

KG: In those days, those who were exhibiting at the Victorian Artists Society, they were seriously established artists …

HM: Yes, I know. Well that was why, I think, I got the little review from … I forget who he was, but he was very eminent, and it was sort of an encouragement thing.

KG: Fantastic. So how do you … one of the things I've never read, in all of the things that you read about the Gallery School, is how you were accepted into the Gallery School. Do you … submit a folio?

HM: You just simply take a whole wad of work. 

KG: Was it a difficult process, from memory?

HM: It wasn't for me [and laughs].

KG: When you got there, what were your first impressions of the Gallery School, can you remember?

HM: Well, everybody was old [laughs]. When you’re 19 or 17 or 18, or whatever age I was – 17, I think – anybody over 20 is old. 

KG: Absolutely. What was the physical environment like at the Gallery School, because it was of course at the Museum, now the State Library, I should say.

HM: Yes. And there was the Drawing School that was – I forget where, but it was a different building. And it was just, you know, it was hideous really, but it was just something you had to do, so you did it, and were glad when you got up to the Painting School.

KG: So, you said you got there quite quickly, you only had to do …

HM: Yes, yes.

KG: And that was very much that you would have been drawing from casts?

HM: That’s right.

KG: And what were your impressions of the teachers and the other students?

HM: They were very kind, but very limited. I mean, you were copying. And I knew that, and I found it difficult to take, but it was something you just had to do, full stop.

KG: And we did many other women there at that stage?

HM: Oh, they were mainly women.

KG: Oh, interesting. Did you, I mean, at the age of sort of 17, 18, did you feel you had a sense, at this early stage, of what your career as an artist might look like?

HM: Not really.

KG: And the Gallery School was of course where you met John [Brack]. So being six years older than you, he’d originally been at evening classes at the Gallery School, hadn't he, in about 1938? 

HM: Yes. Well see he left school at 15, and he worked at the insurance office, and at night, he went to the Gallery School. 

KG: And then he goes into the army, and then comes back, obviously. So he's in the Army in 1940 and then he returns, I think as a full-time student …

HM: 1939. He joined up in 1939, and he got out whatever year it was, as one of the rehab students.

KG: From what I’ve – and they’ve always made me laugh – but from what I've read, your first impressions of him weren't so great. Is that right? 

HM: Oh, it was terribly funny – he never smiled – he was the most grumpy man. He scowled. I was with Dorothy Braund, and we were walking down that little side street [near the Gallery School]. We were going down this way, and John was coming this way [gestures with her hands]. And we thought we'd make him laugh. So we twittered, you know, and he didn't, he just went past and we thought that was a scream that he, you know, he didn't make any … he just scowled. And Dorothy says to me, ‘I bet you couldn't get him to ask you out to dinner’. And I said, ‘Well, who would want to go to dinner with somebody like that’. Anyway, Dorothy was terribly ... she never let anything go. And she went on and on and on, and in the end, she said, ‘I bet you, I'll take you to Gibby’s [Coffee Lounge] for a cup of coffee, if you can get him to take you out to dinner’. So, I was so fed up with Dorothy carrying on that I said ‘Oh, bloody hell, alright’. Anyway, that was that. 

But that day, at the School – it was the end of the day and we were all cleaning up, but I waited because of going to the night school. And so, you know, we cleaned up and so on, but in the meantime, I bought a book – it was very hard to get out books then – but I had a little book about [Georges] Seurat. And when I was looking through it – it was about the Grand Jatte [Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte, 1998-86], but it had all the little sketches he'd done. And I was thinking, ‘Those sketches are just the same as we do’ – you know, they were just like our sketches, and, and I sort of puzzled over this. Anyway, I'd cleaned up, and the School was empty because not very many other people bothered about the life class, but somebody was in the room over there [gestures], who was still in the School, and I sort of wondered what … I didn't know who it was, but I went over, and it was John who was doing this, and he scowled at me. And I said, ‘Do you know an artist called Seurat?’ And he said, ‘Oh yes, he's a Pointillist, or something like that’ – terribly superior. And I said, ‘He did sketches just like we do’. And John says, ‘Oh, no, you don't know what you're talking about. You're thinking of something totally different. That is not what Seurat is’. Anyway, I bought the book to him and I said, ‘Look’, and John looked and he said, ‘Good heavens. So he did. I never knew that’. And he said, ‘You go to life class don’t you?’, and I said yes. And he said, ‘Will you have dinner with me before we go?’ [laughs]

But the funny thing was, Freddy [Fred Williams] and I – our bond, because we’re the same age, our bond, was funny. And I thought it was so hilarious that I rushed down, and Freddy was still there because he went to the night school too, but he was downstairs, and I told him this funny story, and Freddy said to me, ‘Oh, you can't go out with one of those rehab students by yourself – I'm coming too’. So the three of us went together!

KG: Oh, that is gorgeous.

HM: And then, forever after, the three of us went and had dinner before the thing. So we're sort of, we're just mates.

KG: Lifelong friends.

HM: Isn’t that funny though?

KG: That is gorgeous. What did your parents think of John? Did they …

HM: They disapproved very much, very much.

KG: That must have been hard, for you.

HM: Well, my mother said to me, because, of course, to be divorced was a disgrace in those days. You know, there were lists of people who divorced in the paper. It was a totally different sort of setup. And mum said to me – because she'd assumed I'd marry one of her friends, you know, a doctor probably. Anyway, she said, ‘You don’t imagine you're going to ... I mean, what are you going to marry this young man for? That's hopeless, quite hopeless. How do you think you'll get on?’ And I said, ‘Well if I don't get on I'll divorce’. And with that, of course, there was an explosion.

No, my parents were not accepting of John. They thought it was a great mistake. But there you go. 

KG: Did they come around, over time?

HM: Well, they did come around … only because … we lived down at Mentone, or somewhere right down there, and that was okay, but, unexpectedly, at seven months, Clara [the Bracks’ first child] came. And she came, and she was just there, and we couldn't get an ambulance, and so we got a taxi. And I was bundled into the taxi with Clara there, and taken to the Women's Hospital. And at the Women's Hospital they took me and the baby away, and there was my coat covered in blood and terrible mess – you know what I mean? And John was just given that. And evidently, I don't know how, he must have got the taxi to go to Punt Road to see … to tell my mother – which is interesting – he didn’t go to his own mother. He went, mum always tells me that it's eight o'clock – the knock on the door, and she went to open it, and here was John, holding all this, and John just said, ‘Helen’s had her baby’. And mum absolutely melted apparently. So that was a turn round you know, of her accepting. 

The other funny story about backgrounds … Punt Road, in those days, was a very narrow tree-lined street. And there was no bridge at the bottom, and Alexandra Avenue, ended up at Church Street. So if you went over Church Street you were in the country.

And so, we were allowed to, there were lots of children in Punt Road and we were allowed to use our scooters and all sorts of things because there was never any traffic there. So, lots of children in Punt Road, and we used to play in the street, but particularly with scooters and things. But there was a footbridge at the bottom – a very narrow footbridge, about that wide [gestures with her hands], from Alexandra Avenue there, to the other side of the thing. And we were all told, we must never go over the bridge, and we were never told why, but we were just told never, never to go. And the strange thing is, even though there are lots of very naughty boys in the street, but even the naughty boys wouldn't go because we all knew, and we – I don't know how we all knew, but we all knew, without any doubt, that there were men who ate children on the other side. And that was why we weren't allowed to go.

We, we knew there were men that ate children. Isn’t that interesting how that was just a myth that was invented to explain the reason why we were never allowed to go over across?

KG: Which is actually about, as you say, background and difference.

HM: Yes, yes. But I always thought that was, I mean, in retrospect, it just seems so hilarious. But that we all, accumulatively … I mean, you would have thought that some of the boys would have questioned it, but nobody did. Everybody just knew.

KG: That's so interesting. So, we have to go back to the birth of Clara, because I didn't realise … so she was born two months early? So, 1949, she was born, is that right?

HM: She’s 70 now, she’s going to be 71 in …

KG: Yeah, so ‘49. So you're married in ’48 – that's right. So, and you're out, and suddenly you have a baby two months early. Goodness me. That must have been extraordinarily stressful and traumatic. 

HM: Well, you know, you don’t know what’s happening.

KG: No, no. And was she in hospital for a long time?

HM: Yes, for two months. We couldn't get her to she was six pounds.

KG: Oh my goodness.

HM: And I went, mum paid for me to have a week at the Truby King Centre, or whatever it was called, to learn how to look after the baby, which was very useful, because you don't know how to hold it. And when you get it from the hospital it's just there.

But the other funny thing about that was at the hospital, because we were down at Mentone, they said to us, and they told us how to do it, and gave us the bottles – that you must get as much milk as you can. And John took it up because he was at the School. He took it up every day to the hospital and gave it to them, and they gave him the next bottle and so on. And on one day, he was half … he was in the train, going up to Melbourne, and he realised there was a leak in the bottle. So he got out at the next station and he got a taxi, and he zipped up to the Women's Hospital, and gave the milk to the thing, and he felt, you know, terribly relieved. And he came home and he told me what had happened, but it was alright, because he got the stuff there. And when we got the baby, at that stage the baby was having, you know, a quarter of a teaspoon full of milk, and I was feeding the whole of the hospital! And when I got Clara, I mean I had so much milk it was hard feeding her, I had to take the milk off, to get it down so that she could feed, you know, but it evened up. But, you know, it was all a big experience. 

KG: Well, as you know, as a mum of a very prem baby, I can so … you're amazing! At that time, that is extraordinary, and it's a testament to her strength too.

HM: Yes. She matured very well, yes. 

KG: Goodness me. And then he went on to have three more girls. Brave woman! So you’d had Vicki, Frieda and Charlotte – all of the girls, by the time you were 26.

HM: We had the four children in five years.

KG: Amazing.

HM: Well, it was a handful. It's just that we always had a baby. There was always a baby in the family, and even John said to me when Charlotte was about 12 months, he said, ‘Oh it’s such a shame we're not having any more of these dear little creatures come – there's no other dear little creature coming on’. But then, as he said, you’ve got to stop somewhere.

KG: I mean for you, what was that period like for you, and for your work? Did you manage work in that time?

HM: You're always doing something, as there’s always a baby in the family. You've always got the 10 o'clock feed, or for a long time, you've got a 10 o'clock feed and a six o'clock feed, and of course, in those days, there wasn't television. My workplace was just a table – a desktop, so that … which is why I did watercolours. And it was there so that the children couldn't get up to it, you see. And so, I mean, I used to work after dinner, until 10 o'clock feed, and then you get up for the six o'clock feed – well, you've got an hour before you've got to get, you know, busy on everything else. So you're fitting in times, and you get into a way of fitting in times. So that's how that worked.

But it's interesting too, that that time was very important for John. And very few people have realised that The Bar [1954] picture is really about children; about the mother and children. And always there’s the four children. So the barmaid, is really the mother, you know, who's always there picking up, and then you've got the glasses beside. And anyway, it's always interesting to me that nobody saw the other side of what was in John's work. And then in the middle, you know, the vase with the poppies in it – the poppies, when you stare at that picture, the poppies are very unmodulated, you know, there's just two sort of things [gestures]. And you can't really see the stems. When you look at it you just seem them like that [gestures with her hand]. And of course, that's the fluttering of the baby and your stomach. You see? But, but nobody sees those things, which is always … all they see is a bar, and of course it is the bar too, that’s what I mean – John was very good at having different meanings in the picture.

KG: It’s always struck me that his drawings and paintings of children are so tender, even when they're not tender moments – you know, the pulling of a pigtail – but they’re beautiful. They come from real life observation of children.

You retained your name, too. Was that a deliberate thing at the time when you got married?

HM: Well, yes … because as we said, you don't know what's going to happen in the future. And you don't want to be confused, really. So, we both agreed that it was sensible to isolate the two. So, we did that from then. But that was an agreement that we do that.

KG: Very, very modern for the time.

HM: Well it seems silly – Dawn Sime [1932-2001], who got divorced – well then, she's still poor Dawn Sime when she marries somebody else. And that seems a confusion, you know what I mean? 

KG: Absolutely. Besides, the juggle and the kind of challenges of ... it’s not even a lack of time, as you say –it's a kind of different working out of time … Do you think becoming a mother changed your work or your perspective on your work in any way?

HM: Not really. But I have told you about Opus 1 haven’t I? 

KG: Mmm, but tell me again.

HM: Well, after I'd left the Gallery – and this was actually before I had children – there was some very short tram journey I did every day – in the city, and I have no idea where it was because I can't imagine, but it was about a two stop thing, that was just a short thing, and then the tram went back the other way – you see. And every day I got it at the same time. And it was just two carriages. And every time … or it might have been even only one carriage … but every time, the same woman got in the tram and sat opposite me. I must have been – I don't know – whatever age, but she was she was old enough to be a grown up, as it were, you know what I mean. She wasn’t old, but she was not young. And you would relate her with an adult. And I wouldn't relate myself with an adult.

So I used to sit there and she sat there [gestures] and I used to be fascinated with her. And every day she was there. And eventually, I was so puzzled by her that I thought I'd try and sort it out and I’d just draw a sketch of her because I was good at sketching. So I did a sketch at home, just from memory, and it looked the dead spit of her, but it didn't. So, I had the drawing, and the more sketches I did, still looking like her, never looked like her, so I decided that I’d rearrange it slightly. So, I had the idea in my mind, and I did this, and I did that, and I pulled this and I took that out, and I did this and I did that, and I did this and I did that, and this and that and the other. And suddenly, there it is – it’s right! And I was very excited about it. But it didn’t look like any drawing I’d ever seen, and so I thought, well, I don’t know.

I took it to somebody, older than me … and I think it was Arnold Shore, who I knew, and I gave him the drawing and asked him what he thought. And he looked the drawing and he said to me, ‘That is the most erotic drawing I have ever seen’. And I didn’t even know what the word ‘erotic’ was. But it was that … that she was a sexually looking woman … I would never think of my mother as being sexually … you see what I mean? And it was that. So that’s Opus 1.

KG: Fantastic. It’s sort of an education through looking.

HM: And also, that alters my way of looking at things. You see what I mean? And it was a totally different way from the way that John was looking at things, see? So there’s not a melt there.

Helen Maudsley is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.