Autumn in the park

For garden lovers...

With a cloudy no wind day forecast we thought it was a good time to visit the Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens again. We've been before but only to the upper part of the gardens. This time we planned to park in the lower carpark. A friend of Steve's who went last week reported that the autumn colouring was pretty good, so I packed a picnic lunch and soon we were on the road heading towards the Adelaide Hills. 

The temperature was hovering around 12 degrees when we arrived, so we rugged up and set off, cameras at the ready. We were not disappointed. We started our walk at the lake.

Most of the deciduous trees were busy shedding the last of their leaves...

A couple of leaves that just won't let go...

I always adore carpets of leaves and these were spectacular.

But there was still plenty of colour on the trees and shrubs left to see. We had a map of sorts that showed the paths around the gardens but somehow the reality didn't match with the map and although there were signs, they were vague, with arrows pointing to where three paths converged so it was difficult to actually follow a specific route. So we did what all good explorers do, and decided to ramble. At first we stuck to the wide bitumen paths. 

Steve, of course, was immediately hard at work...

... while I was content to stroll.

But my camera came out when I saw the reflections in the waterlily pond.

And then I discovered the flowers, some of which some of which I'd never seen before. They were everywhere I looked. Writing this blog is sometimes embarrassing as I (a keen gardener) have to admit I have no idea what some of these plants are. Even looking them up in my gardening books when I got home didn't help.

I'm pretty sure this is a camellia.

I know these are primroses.

I don't envy the gardeners having to constantly clip these 'clouds'.

We decided to be a little more adventurous and took a smaller gravelly path, all the while marvelling at the autumn colouring. 

I was constantly searching for photo opportunities as all I seemed to do was point my camera at the autumn trees and shoot, knowing I'd get a colourful photo. So I tried to look from a different perspective. 

A wintry branch.

An ibis/egret? My bird expert Colin will have to let me know.

Fungus aplenty.

A pretty woodland flower.

Wispy grasses by the lake.

Time for a rest.

After a break for some refreshments, we set off again. It was still freezing cold!!!!! We spotted a number of sculptures dotted about the gardens that were not too intrusive nor overwhelming (as some sculptures can be), so they got our tick of approval.

We had somehow returned to the lake so followed the sign that said 'Fern Gully'. This was easy to find and a complete contrast to what we had seen so far.

Time to consult the map again. We decided it was no good going to the Heritage Rose garden as the roses would be past their prime. The South American Gully that had a Gondwanan theme seemed promising but the map warned of 'steep gradients' so we gave that a miss too.  Aha - the Rhododendron Gully sounded good, though its peak, the brochure said, was 'August to October'.  We did see some flowers though.

Nearby, I spotted a huge bed of these  - they smelt divine, a heady sweet perfume. It looks a bit like an osmanthus ...

... but the petals seem frilly. So, who knows? 

We had spent nearly four hours wandering about and felt satisfied with what we had seen. On the outskirts of the park, on the track back to the carpark, we passed a swathe of our good old Australian bush - no deciduous colours here, no fragile woodland flowers, nothing neat or ordered. Wonderful.   

Discovering Clarice Beckett

 Today I'm taking you to an art exhibition. I think you'll love it (unless you're into extreme modern art). 

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I motored to Adelaide recently. I was meeting my friend Maggie and we planned to visit the Clarice Beckett exhibition at the Art Gallery of South Australia. I was suitably excited and happily looking forward to the day ahead. 

To set the scene: Clarice Beckett is today recognised as a significant figure in Australian modernist art, though during her lifetime (she was painting in the 1920s and 30s) her art was considered too controversial and avant-garde and certainly not the accepted art form of the day.  She was thoroughly derided by prejudiced male artists and journalists, as were so many of her female contemporaries. Even her father was a critic and forbade her a studio, telling her she could use the kitchen table instead. However, Clarice rose above all this and indeed had quite a number of exhibitions - some of them garnering positive reviews, though no sales.

How do I know all this? We arrived at the exhibition just as tours were set to start, so we positioned ourselves with one of the groups and off we went with a guide. Guides are great because they give you insight into the artist, background knowledge and contextual information you wouldn't know about. Which is why I knew so much before we even started the tour proper. 

It was an impressive beginning. I give thanks to Maggie for this photo; I was too excited to get going to think about taking a photo. 

Beckett's style was termed 'tonalist' which meant muted colours, and diminished, ethereal light enhancing everyday scenes, generally on misty mornings and dusky early evenings, in rain and fog, at sunrise or moonlight.  

I think these two of her paintings are a good example of what the tonalist movement was all about.

Our guide told us how Beckett would take a walk around her neighbourhood and paint whatever she saw, regardless of photographic or painting 'rules'. If there was a telegraph pole in the way, well, in that went, precisely where it was. If a tree was in the exact middle of the scene, then that's where she put it. People were often lone figures, shadows or insignificant, as in this next painting.

She did use colour, but sparingly. Her family had settled in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Beaumaris and many of her paintings were of nearby beach scenes, where blobs of colour catch the eye. Can you pick out the figure leading a horse in this next painting of Sandringham Beach? 

Even though there is colour in the following painting, the overall impression is muted. 

Strong vertical lines were also a feature of her work as in this next painting.

According to the guide, Beckett mostly painted en plein air and only went back home to touch up. She invented a trolley easel, making it easy for her to move around to different scenes at different locations and continue painting. Sadly, she died in 1935 aged 47, contracting pneumonia after painting at Beaumaris during a storm.

We now move forward to the 1970s when Rosalind Hollinrake, an art historian and gallery owner, began her research into the by-now forgotten Beckett. Her sister Hilda had stored about 2,000 of her paintings in an open-sided shed at Benalla in the foothills of Victoria's High Country, but they had been mostly destroyed by possums, other vermin and the weather. She managed to rescue about 369. Some more were discovered stored at Montsalvat, an artists' colony in Eltham, a suburb north of Melbourne. (I'm not sure how they ended up there as I didn't catch what the guide was saying as I was too absorbed in the paintings. Plus a number of reviews and articles about Beckett quote so many different figures for how many paintings were recovered it is hard to know what is true.) Anyway, a number of exhibitions of Beckett's work has been held since these paintings were restored, each one further cementing her work as one of Australia's foremost painters of the 1930s.

Our guide gave insights into the paintings as we wandered into the various display rooms, so we finished the tour knowing so much more. An endearing piece of information was that she had sometimes painted on cereal boxes - and there is one painting in the exhibition that shows this.  

Time for a break. We bought a pot of tea (we chose one especially blended for the exhibition called, I think, Miss Beckett) that tasted to me of almonds, lemon and something spicy. Delicious. 

Revived, we returned to the exhibition to take photos and look once more at the paintings with our new-found knowledge. The following one is of Anglesea Beach and I've recorded this in honour of my friend Kim who has a house at Anglesea.

While landscapes were her choice of subject, she also did vases of flowers; there was  also one portrait on display  - of her sister Hilda. But it was the misty, almost ghostly, scenes in the rain that drew me in.  All of her paintings need to be seen from afar and this was clearly evident in my favourite one (below).  I stood quite close and saw only a thick sweep of blurry grey paint with two barely visible faint blobs of a lighter grey. There was no discernible image. But when I stood way back it was amazing. Emerging from the gloom is a car with glowing headlights. It seemed to be coming straight at me. How Beckett managed to capture this movement and ghostly atmosphere is a sign of her talent.

While Beckett is well-represented in the Art Gallery of South Australia, much of her work is in private collections. Our guide told us that actor Russell Crowe has a sizeable stash, but when we all went 'Oh, that's wonderful that he supports her', she said that he had said in an interview it was purely an investment. Hmm.

A great day and Maggie and I were still discussing what we had seen hours afterwards.

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If you would like to read more, I found these sites interesting.

https://theconversation.com/clarice-beckett-exhibition-is-a-sensory-appreciation-of-her-magical-moments-in-time-153720

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-25/clarice-beckett-australian-art-history/100083566

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