This conversation was recorded by Mary MacQueen's family in 1993 and published as a video cassette and on Youtube. It was made for broadcast media and so departs from the usual style of the Cultural Conversations interviews.
Felicity Maton: Ability is not the key to good drawing. Dedication and development of vision are of greater importance and that may take a lifetime. Born in 1912, Mary McQueen holds her own in competition with artists half her age. She has lived most of her life in the suburbs of Melbourne but her work is represented in every major Australian collection and known in America, Asia, and Europe. The busy life of a wife and mother of four children did not crush her talent, nor was she daunted by times not always encouraging to the arts or talented women.
Paul Jefferies: Now Mary. This, this whole house reflects your personality. Um, would you say it's almost a retrospective, retrospective exhibition of your life's work?
Mary Macqueen: Well, I suppose so but I do think things get out of order as time goes on and things can get behind things and one loses things and you find them behind their own row of things. I suppose la-, layer upon layer, yes it does.
Paul Jeffries: Which they say...
Mary McQueen: Well, there are draws, lithographs and draws and drawings and there paintings and there are mixed media...
Paul Jeffries: So there's a great body of work actually here...
Mary McQueen: Well I suppose so, yes.
Mary McQueen: Well, yes. I rather like the fact of what I call Circa 1912 because I've had a rather funny sort of story. It was a costume exhibition at our National Gallery.
Mary McQueen: And, uh, I came to the conclusion that, uh, it was in the name of fortune I was doing at a costume exhibition at the National Gallery. It's...My interest in costume was more more or less neg...negligible. Uh, and, and all of a sudden I saw a coat and the lines of the coat were quite, uh, striking. And I went over to the co-, coat and read what it said, and it said, "France Circa 1912."
Mary McQueen: That's where...I was born in 1912. It si-, it triggered off a work. I had, I had made up my mind very decidedly that I wanted to have nothing to do with that costume exhibition. And then promptly my mind is changed by seeing something. This quite often happens.
Mary McQueen: So all the way home in the tram, I, uh, I did, I did some drawings in the sketchbook of the, of the coat, the back of the coat. And all the way home in the tram I was thinking, "Now where have I got things relating to 1912 in the art world?" And I realized that I had books of, of, uh, on Appollinaire, Apollinaire's writing, and probably that's wrong but never mind . .
Mary McQueen: And also I had er, er, M-, Matisses done in 1912 and, uh, some of the expressionists, and Picassos, and Bracks. And I have it on the right there, I have a famous Mondrian development I think of a plum tree in blossom, which was also I think 1910 to 1912.
Mary McQueen: So they all relate to the same time as that coat. And that's when it...I got quite excited about that, whereas my mind had been turned dead against it to begin with. So that's the way it work, things work. You never really know how they're going to work.
Mary McQueen: But your mind must, uh, min-, mind must be alert. Your antenna must be out . And if there is this called Circa 1912, it's because a coat was circa 1912 and I was circa 1912.
Paul Jeffries: So the line of the costume was the ...
Mary McQueen: And the collage, collage was developed in that...at that time.
Felicity Maton: Mary Macqueen was indeed born at North Carlton, Melbourne, in a comfortably off middle-class family. Her father was a monumental mason. Grandmother Mary McCartney Ballantine was extremely gifted at drawing.
Felicity Maton: She died giving birth to Mary's father, her first and only child, just one month after her arrival in Australia from Dublin. Familiar with her drawings from an early age and having her name, she identified with her and wished to become an artist. Father and mother supplied materials and encouragement.
Paul Jeffries: Did your parents encourage you to draw?
Mary McQueen: Certainly my father. His mother had died when he was born and his brother was an artist. Yes, my father gave me every encouragement.
Paul Jeffries: Is that a photograph of your parents on the mantelpiece?
Mary McQueen: My grand-, my grandparents.
Paul Jeffries: Your grandparents.
Mary McQueen: The, the, the, the, the female of that is the artist. But she was a sort of child prodigy. You know, she...Um, if I can find the drawing that she won the medal for when she was seven.
Mary McQueen: I drew this copy, copy of Roman acanthus leaf, but the Roman acanthus leaf has a particular structure, and she had it all right. And she was only seven.
Paul Jeffries: When did you start visiting the zoo? The Melbourne Zoo.
Mary McQueen: Well, as I was born near the zoo, I wouldn't know. Probably...
Paul Jeffries: So it really started from very early on in your interest in...
Mary McQueen: I would have started as a baby. I mean taken in ba-, a baby. Yeah, I remember the elephant, you know, the people getting up and sitting on the elephant. And that, that, that, that's long since gone, and there was Molly the monkey. Poor Molly was in a cage, and she used to sit with a, with, um, uh, a orangutang. She was, wi-, with a, a sack over her head.
Felicity Maton: Growing up near Melbourne Zoo, animals were a delight, and her ability later to capture their movement gradually developed into a love of minimal line and abstraction.
Paul Jeffries: How was it you got to art school then? How it, how did that happen?
Mary McQueen: Well I'll say, I, I finished at MLC. And I wanted to go to art school. I should have repeated intermediate, and I hadn't the faintest intention of repeating intermediate, so I went to art school.
Mary McQueen: But the art school, I, uh...And then I became engaged at the end of that year, I think, and, and, um, I gave up art school. Father put me to cooking and sewing. Uh, but I did go on Saturday mornings to a very good painting teacher who taught me a bit of painting, uh, which because I didn't think I was a natural, uh, I didn't hanker after oils.
Mary McQueen: But she went away one morning, and it was away all one morning, and I did the thing that was left for me to paint. Now when she came back, she was very enthusiastic about it because I'd been left to my own devices and invented my own way. Where she was teaching me the Slade way, Tonks, Henry Tonks. And we got...Er, you know, I got that drummed into me.
Felicity Maton: At her own insistence, secondary education at the Methodist Ladies College finished at fourth form. Enrollment at Swinburne Technical College for a commercial art diploma course followed. She completed only one year.
Felicity Maton: Her engagement at 17 to Allan Macqueen, an accountant and a widower, with two sons not much younger than herself, caused comment. He was the minister's son of the local Presbyterian church he attended, and some 30 years her senior.
Felicity Maton: The Macqueens had emigrated from St Kilda island in the Outer Hebrides in 1852. At the age of 18, she married. That year, 1930, saw the beginning of the Great Depression. First her father lost his business. Then her husband was made redundant.
Felicity Maton: Between 1931 and 1935, she had three children -- Muriel Ann, Robin, and Peter. Shortage of money was a constant worry. For the whole of that decade, she did very little drawing.
Felicity Maton: In 1940, Peter started school and she was free to teach herself watercolors, influenced by her grandmother's work and books on the subject.
Peter MacQueen: I remember from an early age being deposited in the Science Museum, left to play with the buttons that work the machinery, while my mother studied the great masters in the National Gallery next door. Her first main subject were terraced houses, and she made her first reputation with these drawings.
Mary McQueen: When Peter went to school, l started And when they're at school you see. And I'd hop on a tram and go into the sa-, into the slums and draw houses 'cause that's very good perspective, and then I'd go out to the terminus where I could walk in their orchards.
Felicity Maton: In 1944, she became a member of the Victorian Artists Society, and in 1945 gave her first one-woman show.
Peter MacQueen: Now, meals were always made in a rush, and life could become rather precarious in those days. I remember on one occasion, she found out just in time that what she had thought was flour she had put in the stew was actually white poster paint, but she was actually a very good cook.
Mary McQueen: Yeah, I went to George Bell, but it was really uphill going to George Bell. Or I ate...because it was the, uh, intuitive fighting the intellectual. And, and it was a... it, it was... it wasn't any good, but he really did teach me to understand Cezanne, and Dufy, and Matisse. Yeah, he taught me to understand the moderns...which was terribly important. The fact that I couldn't draw his way the life, the form, because I drew what I feel and he did by intellect. So, uh, you know, but I learned. Yes, I learned quite a lot from George.
Felicity Maton: Lessons with him ended with the birth of her fourth child, Duncan. Three teenagers and a toddler made time for art almost impossible in the '50s. Her husband's approaching retirement also filled her with unease.
Paul Jeffries: How did you come to the craft of, um, printmaking and lithography? I always wanted to know.
Mary McQueen: Well, because, because my husband was going to retire, and he thought that I should -- naturally -- get work.
Mary McQueen: And as I've never done a han-...You know, I hadn't done, I never done any work in my life, um, you know, I was petrified. In fact, it...I had much so ef-...I had an sort of nervous breakdown.
Mary McQueen: But, uh, and the...then I saw some lithographs of Kokoschka's I think, and, uh, this is, this is a funny part. I thought, "Well, if Kok...and those, those are lithographs of drawings, and I draw, if I go to RMIT where they just, uh, one of the, one of the teachers, staff teaching leading artists work there, uh, you know. I would, if I could, if I could do my drawings on a litho plate, well that would multiply them, and...But the stupid part was as I couldn't sell one drawing, why multiply it?
Mary McQueen: It's stupid. But, but the, the in-, instructor there fast found that I had a, a very positive n-, and, um. my own way of doing things in the first plate he gave me to fill in, fill in with anything I wanted. He d-, he said, "Well, that's a very healthy plate." And, uh, and then I went on from there and, and I didn't really do animals till, you know, well, I had the first state animal exhibition in...'67, the first lithographic animal exhibition...in '67 and '69, '71, '74. I had four of them. It was the s-, same chap.
Felicity Maton: The Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology made their print room available for artists and instruction was given. This opened up a new world to Mary. Needing a press of her own and learning it was impossible to adapt an ordinary washing mangle, her son Peter found one in Ma Deli's junkyard.
Paul Jeffries: Am I right in saying that most of your lithographic work...
Mary McQueen: My lithographic works were all done in this room because the press started off as a manual and was gradually developed into what became a very good press. And all the lithographic works were done in this, this room. The press was here and the table was there, and I think ... and I put them all across there and all across the floor, and across the floors out ...
Paul Jeffries: So you've never used anybody else's press?
Mary McQueen: No, I didn't. Oh, I did use RMIT, um, before I got a litho press myself, yes, my own.
Felicity Maton: Her favorite subjects at this time were landscapes and circuses. Although, during the 1960s, her great ability to draw animals became apparent.
Mary McQueen: The fi-, the first, first time I drew, uh ... eagles I think were...Uh, well I used to...My mother was in the geriatric part on Mount Royal, where Robert Menzies was, and not at the same time but much early, just a little while after. And that, yeah ... the night before.
Mary MacQueen: But sh-, I used to go to visit Mount Royal and walk, sometimes walk back through the zoo, and get the tram, uh, at the zoo and go along William Street. Well, uh, I used to draw animals then, but I, I came to the conclusion that the eagle was not a feminine animal.
Mary McQueen: Uh, but I used to draw the eagle and, and then...Oh, and then I got the giraffe. Yeah, I got the giraffe and, and because the giraffe completely fascinated me, and I did a lithograph of the giraffe, the first b-, uh, first animal lithograph I did.
Felicity Maton: Both her mother and her husband were now in failing health. His death in 1970 marked the end of an era. But the '70s was to prove one of the most adventurous and productive decades of her life.
Felicity Maton: In 1971, her youngest son, Duncan, left home to entertain US troops in Vietnam as a musician. She was 59 and free. With funds from her late mother's estate, she headed for Europe via Mexico and Kenya, visiting her now widely dispersed sons.
Felicity Maton: In 1975, she was in Asia with her sketchbook, but before all this globetrotting, she discovered Oriental papers.
Mary McQueen: Uh, we were passing a shop and I saw a note paper in the window, but that paper. And I thought, "I love that paper. I'd love to work on that paper."
Mary MacQueen: And I went into the shop. I saw there's a lot of note paper and had more books on it. And I asked a chap there. I said, "Is it possible to get sheets of that paper that I could draw on? He said, "There's a pile there." You see it was all folded up and I .... It, it was folded up into, into eight. And, uh, every sheet was different. Some were torn, odd ones had animals having peed on them. Oh, and you know, it was very interesting paper.
Mary McQueen: So um, here's...I, I got 400 I think, initially. A-, and then I couldn't get that any longer. It went. But then when I got to Queensland I found, I found you could get it at, um, Toowong, the House of Katmandu at Toowong and now they've stopped getting it. So, um, I used to give it away but now, I, I, I hang on to what I've got.
Mary McQueen: I've got some Chiang Mai paper but, uh, but that's a different paper. So we got...It's interesting to work on. They're, they're tough, those papers. Very tough. So I don't, I don't know what this hole this rot's coming out ...
Felicity Maton: The development which began in 1974, received impetus in the summer of 1976, '77 when she discovered Nepalese paper.
Paul Jeffries: Both, both works on similar sort of paper are they?
Mary McQueen: Right. Nepalese paper, um...
Paul Jeffries: Because it's interesting. They show very, two very different treatments of the same paper.
Mary McQueen: Well yes, they are. You can, you can sew on that paper. You can draw up in ink or... and ... paint or brush. It's an, it's an extraordinary pliable paper, and tough.
Paul Jeffries: I notice you're not worried by creases and folds. You actually make use of them, particularly in the...
Mary McQueen: Oh, and holes.
Paul Jeffries: ...and holes. Particularly in the portrait.
Mary McQueen: It was done when I was in a very, very low state of mind. I thought I was going mad. And I think it indicates in this so much of that feeling that I did think I was going mad. And, uh, I really did think it was a bad drawing, but it is considered a good drawing. Perhaps because it indicates me going mad.
Paul Jeffries: Do you, do you, do you resort to self-portraits then when you're feeling disturbed or...?
Mary McQueen: No I don't. I'll only do a self-portrait...Uh, well I suppose when I stuck with something else too. I don't really do self-portraits but, uh...
Paul Jeffries: When you're the only available model and you ...
Mary McQueen: It's not about a model but I don't really chose to do self-portraits. I'll do animals but not, uh, not, uh, people. Uh, unless they're asleep or, or ... ugly in some way. Uh, something that I can play on... uh, and exaggerate in which case that gives me s-, something to, to work on. But I...As for, as for, um, good-looking people, I'm not the slightest bit interested in those. But I do like bone structure, particularly people with square jaws. They fascinate me.
Paul Jeffries: Um, who is the lady up there? Um, the l-, lithograph?
Mary McQueen: Oh, it's just a lady I saw singing on television. I did it from memory. So after having done, er, er, well probably some time after having done that self-portrait, uh, I went on working on Nepalese paper and I was working with coloured inks. And, uh, in the case of that one on the side I, uh, would, would have gone over that sheet of paper ... really from my subconscious mind, just covering it by feel in the subconscious. And I think that those, those, what I was doing to create something that does come from the subconscious mind.
Mary McQueen: The, uh, bits of collage around I think are just, um, pieces that I had, some I think out of a family Bible. I got into trouble over that one but, uh, they just make it interesting.
Mary McQueen: I loved, I loved Thailand. I, I loved Bangladesh, uh, as a place and I love the desert. I love dead trees because they're the bones of the tree. Those are the things that, that trigger me off. This is...It is in a way rather a hotch, hotchpotch but it's put together, it, it gives a feeling of Thailand and all the strange things that are going on, but they're all related to rice.
Mary McQueen: And, uh, the color, the coloring probably is not, is not true. It's just the coloring I wanted to use and I probably toned in with the roads. There should be school children. Yes, now there, those are school children going to school and they...The boys were impeccably dressed so this is the beginning of the day. Their shirts were spotlessly white and they, they walked in order.
Mary McQueen: I like that sort of treatment of the paper as it is the, the pa-, it's the paper of ...not far from Thailand and it's, it's in the, in Nepal but, uh, it's very, it's very organic paper, and I think that's why I like it. It's just very organic. Whatever looms, I suppose, in my vision, if it's interesting, I'll grab it and that happened to be a, a local fire at Eaglehawk and, uh...
Paul Jeffries: Which you yourself witnessed?
Mary McQueen: Oh yes, yes. And it, it was all very active. There were firemen coming and going, and smoke, and the sun disappearing and coming and going. It was all quite a, quite an on-the-spot event. And I did the drawing at home, the painting at home but I did the drawings in, in a sketchbook.
Mary McQueen: And, uh, because I'm, I'm probably best at landscape. I'm very...I'm fond of landscape, particular kinds of landscape appeal to me. I love deserts and I love dead trees. You see I'm not a greenie. Uh, it is, it is an interesting one, uh, but it just happened. They happen. If I was in a sensitive mood, they happen. Bits of paper.
Paul Jeffries: So was the paper the odds and the, the odds and ends that came together?
Mary McQueen: Yeah the paper and the odds and ends.
Paul Jeffries: They give you inspiration?
Mary McQueen: They give an inspiration, yes. But you, but you've got to be in a sensitive enough mood to put the p-, the pieces of paper in the right place.
Mary McQueen: And also if you tend, one can tend to put pieces of paper just, uh, they can go in the right place and they're right.Now if a puff of wind goes, blows or one sneezes and all the pieces of paper blow away, well you never really get them back into the right place. The, the right place will come if the moment right.
Paul Jeffries: Do you, do you make the arrangement first and then fix the items into position or do you fix them as you go?
Mary McQueen: They happen.
Paul Jeffries: They happen.
Mary McQueen: Making them, making them first is fatal. But also, er, this friend and her husband have, um, built a mudbrick house which Ingrid tells me is not an ordinary mudbrick house, which is they're rather, you know, sort of rather low. It's...She said it's quite like a cathedral. It's very high and it's, it, it's, it's inspiring. So I am very proud that they were going to put, put my picture in their house. And the upper right hand corner of that one, I, I'd copied out of the Bible. So I wasn't treading on anybody's toes.
Mary McQueen: That is the great Ayers Rock which is the largest rock in the world. And that's only a very small part of it. I forget how many miles it is to walk around it. But it is in Central Australia and not far from Alice Springs. And it's sac-, a sacred rock to the Aborigines.
Mary McQueen: Uh, it is red but su-, in, in the sunset it is a magnificent red. Brilliant red. But it's always red. It's a, it's...The rock is a red rock and a great deal of the rock around that area is red. Um, it's a red heart. It's called a red heart, I think is one of its names, but it is the red heart. And, uh, it's an extraordinary, extraordinary land I think in Central Australia, extraordinary mountain ranges. Uh, the Bungle Bungles and the Olgas. Ayers Rock, which is called Uluru, which is the native's name for it.
Mary McQueen: And the lip shape there I found that in walking around the rock, uh, there were periodically a m-, a mouth shape, like open lips, uh, which was rather fascinating to me. And I suppose that I exaggerated that mouth shape a little bit, but they were a mouth shape so I think the, the rock has, has burst open at some stage, and it just looks like lips. Uh, you can see the size of a tree at the foot of the rock there.
Mary McQueen: Uh, which gives you a little bit of an idea of the scale of the rock because it's a, it's a vast rock. And one is very conscious of the fact that it must have been very, very important to the Aborigines and very sacred to them.
Mary McQueen: But I did find when I was walking around that path, that I suddenly became extremely conscious of a, a quietness. Something I couldn't really quite understand because I saw somebody ahead of me and he was a ranger. And I spoke to him and I told him how that part of Ayers Rock had, had a most remarkable feeling about it. A silence and a feel which is hard to describe. It was a very, very positive feel ...And it was a very important part of the history of that rock.And there was, there was a, a cave somewhere near where I was, which had a great deal of history about it.
Mary McQueen: The paperwork "Ash Wednesday" was the result of the extremely horrific effect the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 19...February 1983 had on the entire Victorian population. A very hot windy day after long drought caused dreadful bushfires, horrible loss of life, homes, and property. A visit to part of the area a week later haunted me. The painting Ash Wednesday released some of the tension caused.
Felicity Maton: After her experiences flying around the world in the '70s, Mary was inspired to produce a series of work she called "Air graphics."
Felicity Maton: After winning numerous and important prizes and awards, one of Mary Macqueen's finest achievements was creating the winning design in 1984 for the four tapestries to hang in the ANZ Pavilion at the Victorian Arts Centre in Melbourne.
Mary McQueen: Oh, that was a straight out letter. A letter from, from, from, uh, uh, the, uh, oh from, uh, fr-, from the powers that be at the, at the A-, at the Arts Centre, actually, uh, commissioning five artists to produce one idea of a suite, for a suite, uh, in the foyer of the, uh, ANZ Pavilion. And the five artists, uh, [inaudible 10:19] sort standard by. So I was one of five. One dropped out, wouldn't, I mean it wouldn't have been right.
When I, when I read the commission, uh, with, and John Truscott was the, was the, uh, one who, who was responsible for all that. Uh, and I had read what he wanted for that particular suite. It really was right on my wavelength. It was...You know I had, I had ideas, I had drawings and...Uh, actually, I brought in...I took in the drawings. We had to go in one day with, with one. We only had to do one idea but we had to be prepared to develop it into a suite of four, i-, if we happened to be the chosen one. And, uh, we had to be paid for that.
Mary McQueen: And, and I, I took one idea in and some photos. And then they rang out of the blue one morning and I was the only one left or two left. There were two left. And they rang and they said that, that Sue was going to England to see, uh, a, a, theatre designer about doing ... you know, so like you ... you had a job with ABC before it was even advertised. And I thought that this chap would have had, had it before they even asked us to do them. It was just that, you know, they had to ask five and, and that was it.
Mary McQueen: But, but this other chap was quite the t-, quite sure he was going to get it and he flew out and with all these works and, uh, I got it so that was it. There wasn't any, any idea of, of him getting it. Which was a lot of silly nonsense because it probably cost him a lot of money and, uh...So, uh, no, I was, I was I didn't know whether...I didn't know what they do. I knew nothing about tapestry. But still it, uh, it worked magnificently because I was quite dedicated and that was a new j-, new job, a new type of job, and I spent an enormous amount of time.
Mary McQueen: They, they dyed special colors and, and things like that. And then, then the, uh, um, Yashi, Yash Kumar, she wanted the harbor. Then Anna Murdoch thought she had the harbor too, but we didn't do it. Anna Murdoch's didn't come off. Dame Elizabeth was hoping for it, for it was her daughter-in-law. But, uh, Mur-, um, what's his names wife, Rupert's wife. She was a writer.
Paul Jeffries: So it's very much an ongoing thing then. You will probably get more tapestry commissions too?
Mary McQueen: Well now I, now I've been asked to, to, uh, go through my sketchbooks and any little bits and little bits of things like the calf there, um, that, that would be suitable for a s-, a very small tapestry. But now these again, the little ones so they let, let people who haven't had, er, uh, experience in, in, in, in doing tapestry interpreting and so on, and selling at a reasonable price.
Mary MacQueen: So I've got that to do if I, if I...And, and I'll, I'll go through the books and I'll get bits and [inaudible 33:58] bits of this and bits of that. But I wonder if I'll ever do anything major again but I might.
Paul Jeffries: Well you've received many awards and honors in your long career. Which one do you most value?
Mary McQueen: Haven't a clue. Perhaps the tapestries.
Paul Jeffries: The tapestries?
Mary McQueen: Oh yes, the tapestries.
Felicity Maton: She had always felt art to be her life's work. A new development would be gradual, particularly as there was a family to consider. Real marks of achievement would come late in life. Perhaps she wanted it so and had a subconscious knowledge that it would be so.
Peter MacQueen: Mary Macqueen died in Melbourne on September 15th, 1994. This production is dedicated to her memory and an appreciation of all her work.
Commentary Spoken by Felicity Maton
Interviews and Script by Paul Jefferies
Produced and Directed by Peter MacQueen
A Videomaker Production © 1993