Again and Again and Again - National Studio '24

In 1971, Arthur Boyd visited Bundanon.

He was an artist, one of the best painters of his generation, and had just taken up a fellowship at ANU in Canberra. Arthur was relocating back to Australia after living and working in the UK for several years. Before that, he had moved around Australia, painting as he went. He had studied the beaches of the Mornington Peninsula, documented the lands around his family’s modest home and studio Murrumbeena, and by the early 70s, he was very familiar with the unique magic of the landscape.

You know what I mean- it starts with that heat. It radiates off everything. The blue skies that are bluer than blue, skies that scream azure louder that the sky anywhere else on earth. Skies that scream like cicadas, shrill and high. Skies that are silent in the death of winter. The smudgy whisps of cloud, a thumbprint of shimmering white rubbed against the blue-as-blue dome above. Ghostly white gums, reaching, pin-straight, looming high above on sandstone rock slopes that tumble into deep green rivers. Waterways that move fast, faster than it seems on that clear mirror surface, the stink of silt, full of life. Birds that don’t sing - they laugh, and cry, and whip in the open chasm of the sky. A thousand shades of green, a thousand more of brown and yellow and orange, everything growing free and tall and wild, the mottle only broken by the flash of colour from the underside of a parrot’s wing.

Arthur Boyd knew it well, but Bundanon felt different. Was different. Something in Arthur shifted during his two week visit in 1971. But his career was calling, and so he left.

He returned to his work in Canberra, and move between Australia and England, painting landscapes as he went. His profile grew, both here and overseas. After a decade of success, in 1979, Arthur and his wife Yvonne purchased the land at Bundanon. They continued to travel the world for Arthur’s art, but always returned to the Shoalhaven River. In 1993, the Boyds gifted Bundanon to the people of Australia. In 1999, they returned to Australia to see the opening of the Boyd Education Centre at Bundanon, but on his way home Arthur suffered a heart attack that would lead to his death a few months later.

Arthur Boyd changed the landscape of painting in Australia during his lifetime. But in all the paintings he completed, it seems that the sloping valley and glassy waters of Bundanon arrested him like no other place. He painted it again and again and again.

Now, Bundanon is synonymous with artistic expression. The Boyd’s gift to the nation has been utilised by some of the country’s most talented writers, painters, photographers, and more through Bundanon’s residency programmes. Looking through the gallery’s catalogue, you will see how each of those artists has documented Bundanon, in different styles and mediums, for almost 30 years. I found work by Shaun Tan, a writer and artist that first sparked my desire to make things, that he created in 2008 during his own residency.

In 2024, I visited Bundanon.

I was there for ATYP’s National Studio. I wrote while I sat near the Shoalhaven River, watching the wombats amble through the wet grass. I heard the crying birds in the morning, watching their dark forms cross the orange sky at sunrise. I worked with my peers to make art that I am proud of. I made friends and connections and memories that will last a lifetime. I can’t express in words the impact that Bundanon and my week there had on me. I won’t tell you every little magical secret, disclose every last dark and murky moment of reckoning, because I think that would spoil some of the magic. And besides, I don’t yet understand what this week will mean for my practice and my life.

But I do know why Arthur Boyd kept painting it. Over and over and over again.

My friend Emma and I went to his gallery on our second last day. We went to an exhibition entitled Wilder Times, which sees 14 of Boyd’s Bundanon landscapes return to the Shoalhaven for the first time since their creation in 1984. Standing in that room, encircled by those giant paintings, I felt overwhelmed. I saw the very specific greens and blues and pinks and browns of the grounds that I had been wandering through for days, the sky I had been waking beneath reflected back in the painted water. Something about being in the presence of greatness and the annuls of history, made manifest in brushstrokes, in the peers I had befriended, in the mentors I had learned from. Looking history and time in the eyes.

Since that week, I’ve been feeling safe and happy in my artmaking for the first time in a long time. Feeling like I was in the right place at the right time, holding that magical river next to my heart, ready for the next challenge.

It’s a?feeling I will return to- again, and again, and again.

Thank you so much to Jane, Hayden, George, and everyone else at ATYP who made this experience so rewarding and enriching. Thank you to the mentors - Chris, Lewis, and Hannah - for sharing your expertise with us. And thank you to every single participant, who made me laugh and cry and ignited new creative fires in me.

Images

Arthur Boyd, SHOALHAVEN RIVER, c.1995

Shaun Tan, Shoalhaven River, trees and currents, 2008

Photograph taken by me, 9th July 2024