HELEN MAUDSLEY

In Part 1 of this interview, Helen talked about her childhood, her time at the Gallery School and meeting her future husband John Brack, the impact of having four young children on her practice, and the background to her work Opus 1. The conversation continues …

Kelly Gellatly: How did you and John negotiate two artistic careers in the house? At the beginning, as you said, you were working on a table, and he didn't have a studio?

Helen Maudsley: No, he had a room in the house. So he worked in his room. And I worked on the desk. And it wasn't until when he went to Melbourne Grammar … no it was later – I’m not quite sure of when … he got a studio. Oh, it was when he went to teach at the Gallery School. No, that’s not right ... [John Brack constructed a purpose-built studio at home in 1969]

Anyway, there was some windfall or something, and we built the studio out there so that he could leave the house and go and work in the studio. So that left me with his room, and Gordon Thompson [Thompson was Director of the National Gallery of Victoria from 1973 to 1974] said to me, ‘Now you've got space, why don’t you try doing oil painting’. But I found it terribly hard to transfer from doing watercolours to doing oil painting. And it took me about two years before I could get rid of the watercolour thing, and find some completely different way of doing the things. But that was when there was a big change, so the work changes very much from when it’s watercolour to when it's oil, but that was why.

KG: Space, and I suppose it's also that ability … I mean watercolour – there's no room for error, because it dries very quickly, which is great you know, if you're protecting work from kids … so you need the space.

HM: It was very, very difficult for me moving from the watercolours to oil painting.

KG: So you effectively retrained.

HM: More or less, yes. And of course I developed the drawing, and using that tiny little pen that has a straw that's just like a hair, and that was lovely – I loved doing that. But of course, you've got to have a very high-stretched paper – you can't do it on a wobbly paper. But that was okay, I got into the way of stretching the paper. But that was a whole oeuvre, the drawing – and I can't do it now because I can't stretch the papers. 

KG: How did you stretch the paper? I’m showing my ignorance!

HM: You wet it; you mustn't wet it too much, just enough – it’s got to be wet all over, and then you sticky tape it round, so it's taut. So when it's dry, it gets very taut.

KG: It becomes quite card-like, doesn’t it? 

HM: Yes, that’s right. But the kind of drawing I was doing needed that, you couldn’t do it on just loose paper. So I suppose I invented a method of drawing.

KG: That's so interesting, I didn't realise that, about the wet paper, and it actually reveals something about the forms … there’s a kind of tension.

HM: Oh, of course, it does. That’s right. The only thing about the drawing is you can only add, you can't take out. So you go from the very slight themes; you build it up to the dark ones. But it's interesting that you can only add, you can't subtract. So there's a high skill in that.

KG: Absolutely. Well, you've got the tension of the forms, but there's also a mental tautness isn’t there, because you’re constantly on your guard I imagine, about what’s right …

HM: You’ve got to have a very light hand – a very steady hand.

KG: Oh, that's fascinating. Did you and John, when you were working together … Am I right in thinking you probably didn't consult each other on your work, and that it was very separate?

HM: No. Every now and then John would ask me to come down – because he'd been working and he wasn't quite sure how it was going, and I would just come down and he'd say to me something or other, you know, ‘What do you think, are the lights too light?’, or something like that, and I would say what I'd say, and then he'd say, ‘Well get out now’, and he didn't want me there anymore. But there were several occasions when he was just not quite sure whether it was too light or too dark, because he'd been staring at it all the time, but otherwise, there wasn't any to-ing and fro-ing.

KG: And did you ask him about your work?

HM: No, because it was too foreign for him. What he was doing was too different to what I was doing. So it didn’t work the other way.

KG: That makes sense. Do you think he understood your work?

HM: No. He became cross because I wasn't following in his footsteps, you know what I mean? So in the end, it was just two separate identities.

KG: That must have been incredibly hard for you.

HM: Well, it was hard. But you know, one of the nice things he said after he stopped painting because he was degenerating … he said to me, ‘You have no idea how lucky you are that you don't need a model’. Which was nice I thought, because he’d never said that before. But that must have been in his mind all the time, because he needed a model … he was using a model. And he always used a model.

KG: That, to me, Helen is just an extraordinary testament to your will and strength, that you can live with someone – who doesn't quite understand your work – and you believe in yourself, and you keep going. 

HM: Yes, well you see, there was always the children as a sort of bind, if you see.

KG: Oh absolutely, and I don't mean … it's not a reflection on your relationship at all – you're a family and a unit. But, yes, that must have been challenging. You’re amazing.

Did you and John remain friends with other artists? Obviously Fred [Williams] and Lyn [Williams] … but who were your support networks? Was it artists and their wives, or … 

HM: Oh, not really. In those days you know, it was like little fiefdoms. There was this fiefdom, and this fiefdom, and nobody really talked to each other.

KG: Who was part of your ‘fiefdom’? [laughs] I can’t imagine you having a fiefdom, but a gang?

HM: Well, Freddy [Williams], of course. The relationship between John and Freddy was really one of older to younger, you know what I mean? And that lasted a long time until Lyn came and busted that up. Len [Leonard] French, of course, was a friend of John's. There wasn’t a mesh because what John was doing was not what everybody was trying to do – everybody was trying to be modern.

KG: And how about for you? Did you remain friends with other women artists, or did you develop friendships through the girls and all those networks? 

HM: Yes, well … see, other artists are funny, you know. Jenny Purnell, she was an artist who we were friendly with because she had the children, and we were very supportive of her. And I was very shocked when she got off and started to rubbish me, and I felt, we've been so supportive of her, this is amazing. 

And of course Arthur [Boyd] was always a friend.

KG: He seemed to me – I didn't ever meet Arthur, but he always seemed to have a very gentle disposition.

HM: My dear, Arthur was the only man who ever supported me … but he always did. He was a darling man.

KG: What did he say about your work? Can you remember?

HM: Well, he just was always supportive, always supportive of me.

KG: This might get back to fiefdoms …So you held your first solo exhibition in 1957 at Melbourne's Gallery of Contemporary Art on the invitation of John Reed. Now, your relationship with John and Sunday and the Heide crew, did it extend much beyond that? 

HM: No, no – it was gone. See, they wouldn't have another exhibition of mine because now they were grand, they were the – whatever it was – and I was disgusted to be dumped like that, but there you go. 

KG: So, they moved on? 

HM: Yes, they were no longer the CAS …

KG: Oh, they became the Museum of Modern Art.

HM: Yes. And that made all the difference you see. I wasn't up to that standard [laughs].

KG: Different ambitions! [laughs]. You then go on, and you have solo exhibitions in 1959, 1961, 1963, 1965, 1967, 1971 and 1974, and you of course, continue to exhibit extensively since that time.

HM: And I did some teaching too.

KG: Yes, yes, and I've got some questions about that because I find that really fascinating. I think what's always interesting is, you know, those exhibitions were consistently reviewed across the years and since, but many of those early reviews while polite, reveal that the reviewer was often quite perplexed by your work, and sometimes they were either condescending or negative or both. I found myself getting very angry on your behalf when I've read some of them. It’s probably an obvious question, but how did those reviews make you feel at the time when they were that way, and how did you find the strength to keep going and to keep putting your work out there?

HM: Well, it was no good for sales, if you know what I mean. And it was everybody just pushing me down. I was being pushed out, other people were being pushed up. And, look, you know, if that's the way it is, that's the way it is. So in the end, you don't bother. It doesn't make any difference.

KG: But you kept going, and that's the amazing thing. So many people would have pulled a blanket over their head and …

HM: Well you see, Guy Stuart says to me, ‘This is what you always say’ … but evidently, I used to always say, ‘I can't go until I've completed this one’. [laughs] And of course, this one then led to the next one, and that's right. So that's how it goes. And then you can't go until you've completed that one. I thought it was terribly funny, Guy just said to me … well this was million years ago …he just said, ‘That's what you always say’, when I showed him what I was doing, and said, ‘I can't go until I finish this’. And I had no idea I always said that, but apparently I did!

KG: But that's wonderful because it shows the drive and the conviction remains within you, it's not about external endorsement.

HM: Well it wasn’t about external things because external things were inapplicable.

KG: It’s a hard one, but do you think gender had a role to play in that sense of misunderstanding or bafflement around your work?

HM: Oh, sure. Women are only accepted if they did work that was like men at that time. So, you know, George Bell students did well. You see what I mean?

KG: Yes, because they’re of the George Bell School … And how did other women respond to your work?

HM: Oh, nobody liked it. See, if nobody likes it well that gives you a freedom.

KG: Absolutely. And it also means that those who … and you did have people who bought your work – you know, I'm thinking of Ursula Hoff early on at the NGV [National Gallery of Victoria] … it also means that those who travel with you really get it and appreciate it.

HM: Ursula buying the picture [Plant Landscape, 1958] that she did for the NGV was marvellous, but they never hung it. And I used to feel, you know, they'd have exhibitions of that time and they'd put all sorts of pictures up, but they never ever put that one up. But then, notwithstanding, the NGV had it. But they never collected. Nobody else bought anything.

KG: At this stage of your parallel careers in this house (not this house!), John's career is taking off, and he's really cementing his reputation as one of Australia's foremost painters. How did you negotiate that?

HM: Oh, I was delighted – it was in my interest, and I wasn't at all envious of him because it was totally different to what I was doing. And, you know, we never really made money out of it until Rudy Komon came. So, there was never a real income from John's painting. There were very few, very few people who bought.

KG: And he was still working, wasn't he?

HM: Yes, but, when Rudy came, it all changed.

KG: Did you ever … not even in terms of an enviousness, but did you find it annoying on behalf of yourself?

HM: No. I mean, we were just glad of any money that came in. And that was why I started teaching at the CAE [Council of Adult Education], because when Clara came to the secondary school; look, the costume cost more than I would spend to dress the four of them because I sewed. Anyway, Clara went, and that was that, and then Vicky went and I realised that we were going to have to park out all this money for the next four years, and we didn't have the money. And so I thought well, I can do something, so I went to the CAE. And we had to prove ourselves at the CAE, so it was just a bit of luck that the class I was given was very enthusiastic about the way I was teaching and so the CAE said yes, they would accept me as a tutor. But it takes a long time to get a good program for teaching, because it was a 10-week course in painting and drawing, and so it took me years to get it right, and to get everything going really right. But then when Charlotte, our youngest daughter left school, John says to me, ‘Now you can stop that idiot CAE teaching’, and I said, ‘But it's taken me all this time to get a good program, I’m going to keep it on. So I did, and of course the income from it was very helpful also. But that was how I got involved with the CAE.

KG: It’s underplaying it to say you build a good program – you have a band of merry, loyal followers from those CAE courses now. But you also went off and studied group dynamics …

HM: Oh yes, that was for the teaching. 

KG: And neurolinguistics?

HM: It was very useful thing to know about that. I found that group dynamic thing very interesting, and very useful for the teaching.

KG: Where did you study those courses?

HM: I forget the name of the man who ran them … but they were very good [The short courses were run by Phil Boas on subjects such as Skills Working with Small Groups]. Most of the people who went to them were teachers. It was how to manage people.

KG: Did that influence, did that help with your work?

HM: Oh, I thought that was terribly helpful for teaching for me.

KG: And what about your art? 

HM: No, it doesn’t have anything to do with the art. It was just for the teaching.

KG: You said to Sonia Harford in an interview in The Age in 1996, and I quote: ‘I think John would have found it very hard if he hadn't got success’ …

HM: Oh, but he would! You know, that was the other thing, for the [NGV] Travelling Scholarship, John put in, and everybody put in, and John just assumed he would get it. And you couldn't believe the stuff that went on about it because he failed. I mean, honestly, it was preposterous the stuff that went on. But he just assumed success. 

KG: But you said for you it was different, and you don't know why. It’s interesting, isn't it? But you're in such a different position now, 25 years later after you had that conversation with Sonia Harford. You've been in a number of multi-generational shows – I think of John Stringer’s show at the MCA [Museum of Contemporary Art Australia]– Cross Currents, or you know, Painting More Painting at ACCA [Australian Centre for Contemporary Art], so your work is being seen in so many different contexts … and also your solo exhibition [Our Knowing and Not Knowing] at the NGV more recently. How do you feel about success now, for you?

HM: I don’t know … there's still people that say the most idiotic things about what I do, and you just sort of let it ride. There was an occasion somewhere or other where there were artists and so on, and a young artist comes up to me and she says to me, ‘Do you use mauve because your name starts with Mau?’ I mean, what can you do with that? I mean it's so stupid, you don't feel hurt by it or anything, it's just ridiculous.

KG: It might have taken you longer to get there, but is it a good feeling at this age to have had those kinds of shows and that recognition?

HM: Oh, terribly, yes. It’s very supportive to have had that one at the NGV, but also to have any kind of affirmation is helpful, if you know what I mean – it's supportive. Because I mean the fact is, you don't know. John used to say, ‘There's what the artist says, what the viewer says, and then there's the work itself’. And I mean, lots of work has the most amazing rhetoric, with nothing behind it. So you don't know whether it's just a lot of rhetoric. You don't know what you've done, until there’s a response. And so you just have to hope. But as John said, that was the same for him. You don't know what you've done – if you've really done what you think you've done.

Helen Maudsley is represented by Niagara Galleries, Melbourne.