Barbara Hepworth’s garden in St Ives, Cornwall, is small and walled, but there are foregrounds and views which are framed by the ‘holes’ that pierce most of her sculptures. This place of art echoes Hepworth’s philosophy as an artist: “to infuse the formal perfection of geometry with the vital grace of nature”. A bird’s-eye view of Barbara’s ‘back-yard’ would be […]
My parents had a Constable hanging on the wall of our family home for years . . . reproductions of Constable’s idyllic English landscapes like ‘The Hay Wain’ were popular after WWII. John Constable (1776-1837) painted ‘Study of ‘A boat passing a lock’’ (owned by the National Gallery of Victoria) between 1823 and 1826: the sluice gates of Flatford lock […]
Paris during October 2012 was grey most of the time; the train to Avignon, Provence, delivered us from rain into blue skies, sun and heat. In February 1888 Dutch painter, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), also travelled to the south of France in search of light and “the future of new Art”. He voluntarily entered the asylum, Saint-Paul de Mausole on […]
Melburnians have their favourite hang-out places: a lane, an arcade, an outdoor café, an open square, a grassy knoll, a river bank; many are just content to wander. Most ‘places’ are graced by some form of public art such as a statue, painted poles, murals, a sculpture, or that contentious form of art, graffiti. In 1980 a sculpture called ‘Vault’ […]
The backdrop of rolling hills and vineyards around Healesville (about a one hour drive east of Melbourne) befits the exhibition, ‘Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart paintings 1940–2011’, which is currently showing at the TarraWarra Museum of Art (twma.com.au). The rural landscape not only resembles the Tuscan hills around Arezzo where Jeffrey Smart has lived in his 18th century house since […]
It all started when Japan opened its doors to the West in the 1850s and Japanese works of art infiltrated Europe, the centre of interest being in Paris. By 1867 French Impressionist artists such as Claude Monet turned their attention to the popular ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’) woodblock prints and illustrated books that depicted life in the urban […]
It took three hours from Kyoto by train and bus (make that 6 hours return), but it was worth it … My friend with whom I was travelling had kindly acquiesced and agreed to my bizarre pilgrimage to see two rocks in the Genkai sea (the southwestern tip of the Sea of Japan). For some reason, when Gary Hickey, our […]
As the summer sun disappeared behind the silver birches and a silent dusk cloaked our backyard, I was transported back to Sweden for just one moment. Over a year ago (30 June 2011) we had flown into Stockholm Arlanda airport. The stark white building, surrounded by a dense green forest, with its fragrant timber-lined interior, confirmed my stereotypical images of Sweden […]
There’s a pig flying down Swanston Street. I saw it only recently on a cold wintry day in Melbourne as I waited for the lights to turn green at the Burke Street intersection. The sun was shining and the sky was so blue that I looked up and there it was … a pig with wings, balancing on top of […]
Leaves were falling and London was wearing a mantle of fog on the morning of Monday 22 October 2012. Autumn leaves brought to mind two exquisite paintings, ‘Autumn Leaves’ (1856) and ‘Mariana’ (1851), by John Everett Millais, one of the founding members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (PRB). So it made sense to head for the Tate Gallery, situated on the banks of […]
Denise’s assessment was thorough, considered and she highlighted several important shortcomings in the plot and character development. ‘Red Can Origami’ became a much stronger manuscript for her input!
Madelaine Dickie
Denise was invaluable in getting my novel from a rough 3rd draft to publication ready. I especially liked her capacity to develop a collaborative working relationship so that all the work of editing, polishing, re-writing was held in the spirit of my writing journey.
Denise has well-honed writing skills, of course, but as well she has this unusual capacity to support and encourage. She really tuned in to my direction as a writer which was enormously helpful in moving my novel forward. Beyond the fine-tuning of my last draft, Denise then gave some timely coaching to help me negotiate the new realities of publishing. How great it was to have access to such a well-grounded and experienced mentor! Highly recommended.
Thupten Lekshe
Dear Denise, Many thanks for the way you have prepared and presented my memoir. I could not imagine at the start that it would turn out looking the way you have presented what now seems a very interesting life; in fact, I might live it again. Thank you and congratulations.
Percy Rogers