At its core, Melbourne is a labyrinth: a network of streets and back alleys connecting spaces and places that give this city an intimate personality, an undeniable energy, an edgy culture, and a strong sense of community. How can this be denied when ‘Melbourne Now’, the biggest exhibition of local contemporary art ever staged at the National Gallery of Victoria […]
January 1st 2014: time to jab a pin into my list of destinations yet to be explored. Apart from the consideration of important aspects such as available cash and security, travel to distant countries is a lot easier than a century or so ago. Today’s travel writers not only narrate their journeys through the written word but also through images […]
For most of us, Christmas takes us back to our childhood: Christmas stories, dressing up as Mary or Joseph or the shepherds (with a tea-towel head covering) in the kinder nativity pageant, family gatherings indulging in traditional Christmas food, leaving out milk and cookies for Santa Claus, the Christmas tree and Christmas carols. Since the 1970s and the Vietnam War, […]
A warm glow permeates through the latest two-part TarraWarra Museum of Art (TWMA) exhibition, ‘Russell Drysdale: Defining the Modern Australian Landscape’ and ‘Future Memorials’. Many of the museum walls that display Drysdale’s richly coloured paintings and photographs of the Australian outback are a vibrant, yet subdued, gold colour. Sunlight filters through the full-length window at the northern end of the […]
Mont Sainte-Victoire is Cézanne’s mountain and I had to see it. On 13 October 2012 we’d spent too much time wandering through the charming town of Aix-en-Provence where Paul Cézanne (1839-1906) had lived most of his life. It was one of those perfect days in Provence: blue skies with a clear heat, but the autumnal sun was sinking towards the […]
The Romans gradually conquered the Greeks during the last two centuries B.C.; it was an epic confrontation—might against culture—but Rome could not remain immune to the beauty and sophistication of Hellenic art. Ancient Greek painting and mosaics have distinguishing features which the Romans borrowed and transformed into their own brand. This artistic ‘hybridisation’ by the Romans was an attempt to […]
Claude Monet (1846-1926) painted water in its many forms and moods—a rough and animated sea, a misty and mysterious river, a still and reflective pond, and crisp, white snow. Monet began his water garden at his home in Giverny in 1893, and over time the plants in and around the pond grew and merged, softened and framed. In Monet’s painting, […]
“I am now got into a new world . . . ” wrote Lady Mary Wortley Montagu (1689-1762) from Andrianople (now Edirne, on Turkey’s border with Bulgaria) on 1 April 1717. Lady Mary was an avid letter writer and I imagine that she would have loved the immediacy of communication via twitter and email if she lived today. Her direct […]
What are those rabbits doing in the border of that medieval prayer book? Is that a snail jousting with a dog? Why is a naked man riding a many-legged ‘dragon’ in the lower margin? No, your eyes are not deceiving you. This profusion of humans, animals, fantastical plants and grotesques painted in the margins of thirteenth and early fourteenth-century Europe […]
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 […]
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