Margaret Olley, Adrienne Gale and I

I have been writing about legacies recently and this blog is a testament to a remarkable woman who left a vibrant legacy for the whole of Australia - and that woman is Margaret Olley. I had the pleasure and the privilege, (this is a Free Exhibition) to attend the opening of "A Generous Life - Margaret Olley" at the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane. Dont miss it. Margaret's early years in northern Queensland and later in Brisbane, which she regarded as home, imbued colour and light in her work like no other. She is famous for her still life paintings - though I really don't know why they should be termed so, there is such light, movement, joy and warmth in those paintings - and like her life, which was never still, she saw the beauty and uniqueness in every stem and bud, every artefact she collected from her overseas travels and every precious item stacked in her marvellous crazy chaotic studio. 

Here are some of my favourite ones : 

I found out about Margaret Olley from a good friend Lucy Bolton who went to Tweed Galleries to visit the permanent exhibition that is on there - They have actually recreated her studio in the Gallery painstakingly and accurately, recording the thousand of items they found there after her death in 2011. 

Margaret practically died with a paint brush in her hand and I am sure she could not have thought or planned a better ending. She was instrumental from a very young age in encouraging emerging talent, and she bought paintings which she then asked big galleries to exhibit, giving prominence to the young artist. No one could really say no to Margaret, she was forthright and fun and always told people exactly what she thought and why. She was generous throughout her life and with her art. 

Her style and art is there for other artists to emulate and I would like to believe that when Adrienne Gale started painting Margaret's work went some way to helping her develop her own style. Adrienne was a talented painter, a mother to three and devoted to Bill, her husband. Sadly she is no longer with us. When Bill and her daughter organised a retrospective of all of her art in March of 2019, I was lucky enough to review it and as soon as I walked in I fell in love with a painting which had it all. It had Margaret in its still life genre, Adrienne in the scene she chose, Queenslanders in the background to ensure that this could be nowhere else but here, open doors and sunlight filtering in the Queensland way, agapanthus in a vase, the favourite flowers of Dr Henry Foy and his wife Athena, (one of the first enduring friendships we made in Kenya,) and blue - lots and lots of blue - my favourite colour. Margaret and Adrienne are now above my writing desk bringing that life, light and love straight through that open door. Here it is :