[Welcome]

Peter Pinson: It's September 2013 and we're in Waverley, an eastern suburb of Sydney. This is the studio of Ann Thomson.

[studio pan]

Peter: Ann, you come from three generations of book sellers. Were there any people in your family who were practicing artists?

Ann Thomson: My Aunt Etta was known to be artistic, and she made things. She was a very strong woman actually and I think was stopped from being an artist because of the circumstances of being married, having children, having a very autocratic husband. She was always interested in my work, which was nice, too.

Peter: And you found in your grandfather's house a collection of African artefacts.

Ann: Yes, when we used to visit my grandmother and grandfather wasn't alive, but there was a shed at the bottom of the terraced garden. I used to head down there and look at things that were on the walls and leaned up ... leaning against the walls. They were, they were sort of tribal art. I couldn't describe any, and I would have said they were aboriginal. But they might have been African with...

Peter: And you later became very interesting in tribal art yourself ...

Ann: Yes. Oh, I'm sure it started something in me, and there was a box of things in. I used to be very interested in that.

Peter: You initially studied in Queensland in the mid-fifties with Jon Molvig. How did that come about?

Ann: Jon Molvig came to Brisbane, and he started an art school in St. Mary's Church Hall. We all went along to that. It was wonderful to meet a real artist as he was known to be. Before that I'd had lessons with Richard Rodier Rivron who would teach you how to paint an apple, and ... I belonged to something called the Younger Artist Group of the Royal Queensland Art Society. So, I think the people who had some sort of creative leaning towards art got together in Brisbane, being such a small town in those days.

Peter: John Molvig was a ferociously expressionist painter, though not entirely abstract. Do you think studying under him sowed the seeds that would later grow into the Abstract Expressionist that you later became?

Ann: Everything that I came upon was part of...everything that one comes upon is part of what you become, I think. He was very painterly. In fact, he called himself a painter, not an artist. So I think I like the notion of getting into something that was really...it was a strength and whether it was Abstract or German Expressionism, it was action.

Peter: Then you came to Sydney and studied at the National Art School. Did the National Art School seem a little bit tame, a little bit orthodox after your experience with John Molvig?

Ann: Oh, no, I didn't think that. I mean it was ... I just loved art school. It took me great effort to get to Sydney. Everyone else had gone off on boats to explore the world and all I could ... all Ann Thomson could do was get to Sydney and go to East Sydney Tech. But I had great teachers there, [John] Passmore and Godfrey Miller and [Lyndon] Dadswell and David Strachan.

I mean I just got so much out of art school. We had a wonderful drawing teacher, Dorothy Thornhill who would, who would ... put ... the model would be to draw a round. She talked about contours. So, that really set me up for drawing in space and working in space, I think. But Passmore was a great influence. I just loved it all.

Peter: You completed your National Art School studies in 1962. At that time, almost all of the avant-garde painters in Sydney were practicing some variation of Abstract Expressionism. What was your response to Abstract Expressionism at that time?

Ann: Who were they, Peter?

Peter: Tom Gleghorn...

Ann: Gleghorn, yes. He is.

Peter: John Olsen, John Coburn, Margo Lewers. Leonard Hessing.

Ann: Perhaps Frank Hodgkinson. No, he wasn't Abstract, was he?

Peter: Yes, but he had probably gone to Spain by then.

Ann: Ah, yes, yes. Look, being a woman, I didn't mix with all those male artists as an artist. I sort of seemed to ... I think I was more on the track of the American abstract expressionism. I remember being in my studio, which I had very soon after leaving art school, I was lucky. I had all these Art International magazines and I used to think de Kooning, get out. He was a great influence.

I was very close to that somehow. When I went to New York, I met Ken Noland and went and stayed up in his place in Vermont. I just think I came out of American abstraction via Australia, in a funny way.

Peter: What year did you go to New York?

Ann: '75, 1975. That was my first adventure overseas and then I went on to France.

Peter: Your first solo exhibition was with Watters Gallery in 1965. How did that exhibition come about?

Ann: Yes, wasn't I lucky? I was painting away in my ... I had a studio in house in Glenmore Road [Paddington], and Frank Watters came to visit and suggested I have an exhibition. So that was on the verge of having my first child. I was very lucky I had that exhibition because a lot of women would go off and have families and never quite got a ... come back. I don't think anything would have stopped me being an artist somehow.

Peter: In 1967, a momentous exhibition came to Australia, Two Decades of American Art. It included work by the preeminent American abstract expressionist painters, including de Kooning, Franz Kline and Joan Mitchell. Did that exhibition have any impact on your own work?

Ann: Oh yes, it would have. What was that '60?

Peter: '67.

Ann: You see, I was in the middle of being a mother and having babies and teaching at SCEGGS [Sydney Church of England Girls' Grammar School]. I would have seen that exhibition. Yes, yes that was great. The first exhibition I remember coming here was an exhibition of blown-up prints of great artists. Do you remember that?

And that had a great influence. I realised that paintings could be big. Because all I had seen before was little illustrations in our history of art book at school, more or less. We were certainly left out of the world scene here in those days.

Peter: Turning to your paintings, do you use preliminary sketches?

Ann: I don't use preliminary studies in a normal way. I don't, for instance look at what's on the wall, it's there but ... but I work towards, the small works I do are to do with what happens afterwards. I know that now. I've learned that.

For instance, when I was doing that big painting at Darling Harbour which was five metres high. I went down to Darling Harbour and I drew and I drew and I went back to my studio which was at Kings Cross, then, and I did works on paper and I did ... and then we were given the Pier 7 to work in - in those days there were big spaces in Sydney where artists could go and do a big could work - and I'd pin then all up on the wall and I can honestly say I forgot to look at them. But they were in there, you see.

And that's ... I believe in collecting things. It goes inside and it comes out somehow. It goes into some kind of subconscious memory bank.

Peter: There's a wall in your studio here where there are scores of small works on paper.

Ann: I love pinning things up.

Peter: Some people may see allusions to ponds or escarpments in your paintings. Is that reasonable or do you see yourself as essentially abstract painter?

Ann: I like people to look at my paintings and find ... and find things. I mean I think that's what abstra ... what so-called abstract art can do. It can offer something for the imagination and then the imagination is the viewer's as well. Then there's some sort of real communication if one's lucky ... if you're lucky. Those things come in when I start painting. I mean I don't set off to just paint abstract. I'm not really quite an abstract painter, I think, I'm something else.

Peter: Over the last decade a number of artists have gone into the outback in groups to draw inspiration from the landscape. Has that concept ever interested you much?

Ann: Well I love going out with other artists and being in the landscape. In fact, I went to New Zealand ... I went to New Zealand with a group of artists. But they all seemed to jump out of the car, put up their easels, and start painting what was in front. I was thinking, "Where could I hide"?

But in the end it turned out well, and I do a lot of drawing outside and thinking. But I love going into central Australia, too, but then what I'm most interested in is looking at rock art.

Peter: And when you go into central Australia, do you prefer to go with a bunch of other artists?

Ann: Well, I like company because it's pretty ... you know, I'm on my own here. So if somebody says, "Come out to central Australia" and if I can afford to go, yes, I would go.

Peter: On those excursions would there be a tendency for the artists to get together at the end of the day and chat about what they've done?

Ann: No, no. It's more a case of you can snoop around and see what other people are doing, but usually at the end of those things there's an exhibition. What comes out of that painting outside is the final works. For me they're not done on the spot at all.

Peter: Who are some of the other artists that you've made those excursions with?

Ann: Let's see. They go back a long time. Jenny Sages used to organise trips mainly to see Aboriginal art, and there was a lot of looking and going. We went in a helicopter to see the Bradshaw paintings, and I've seen a lot of those. I mean, I just think it's like going to France. You just go there to see the great art and great museum.

I mean, I think it's one of the greatest museums in the world to go out there and look at those huge walls of paintings and then painting over painting. That's another wonderful thing, and it's so much to do with belonging, being painted on rock, and being painted with ground pigment, and then going into the rock. It is wonderful, isn't it?

Peter: Have you formed friendships with any Aboriginal artists?

Ann: Nothing springs to mind unfortunately, no. When I was growing up, we hardly saw Aboriginal people. You know, isn't that sad? I was given this young Aboriginal girl to look after at school when I was about seven and she seemed very shy and floating, you know.

Peter: One question that Scottish abstract expressionist Alan Davie would sometimes be asked was, "When is your painting finished"? How would you answer that question?

Ann: My answer would be the painting tells me. Sometimes I think I can get away with it and think, "Oh, that's... that'll do." But it has to be finished. And it has to be ... it has to go through a kind of adventure of pushing it around, but it's like a bit of a risky business. It's a bit like jumping off a cliff. You can't just do it on top, so I have to get into a painting.

That painting over there I did ... I stared ... abandoned before I went overseas, and then I came back and I knew what to do with it. So sometimes there can be time in between starting a painting and finishing a painting.

Peter: You mention risky business, the business of taking chances and exploring with your work. If you've done a work that you felt had come together very, very well indeed, would your next painting deliberately be pursuing some slightly different formal problem or a different theme so that you don't repeat yourself?

Ann: I might work in a series of things. For instance, last year I did a series of works on that tarred paper that I use. And ... I did about 12, and they just kept coming and coming and then "Pffwt," that was it. So I couldn't do those, and I don't think I could do that particular thing now. So that's gone. But when you go on you pick up something from that past, but its for me it's always going onward. I heard a quote from Ai Weiwei, and he said, "It's an artist's responsibility to develop your imagination." And I'd like that.

Peter: I guess you would see yourself as a second-generation Australian abstract expressionist.

Ann: No, I don't see that. Maybe people see that. I never thought I am ... I don't know. But am I? Yes, OK.

Peter: Well, I'd been wondering whether you'd see yourself like, Joan Mitchell, who wasn't actually a member of that circle that established abstract expressionism initially in the States, but she came along, gave it her own flavour, took it in her own personal direction.

Ann: Yes. See, in a way I'm not much younger than those people that you might be thinking of. And so maybe it's being a woman that makes us trail a bit behind, huh? But I do love her work, and I love the way she went to France and worked, too. Maybe she was driven to it.

Peter: You returned to living in Queensland for two years in the mid-seventies. Other than that you've lived your entire career as a painter in Sydney. Has it been important to you to live in the centre of a major city?

Ann: I think ... I like being in the city, yes. I like being near the sea, swimming in the mornings, and seeing what's under there and underneath ... the water. In Clovelly, for instance, there're wonderful things to be seen there. And I like being near, you know, having the opera house there, I should go more often. But no, I don't think I'd like to go and live in the country and be isolated forever. I like the big city. I like the feel of a big city.

Peter: In 1978 you were awarded a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, and you returned to the Cité for a number of further residencies over the years. Did living and working in Paris change what you were doing?

Ann: I was just going to say I loved living in Paris, and it became something that I did. I didn't start traveling 'til I was about 40, and since then I've gone back whenever I could do it, say, every couple of years with gaps. I was there just this year, and it's another place for me to be and work and to draw in something quite other than here. You know, it's not a matter of going out to the country. It's for the museums and people.

I had an apartment in Saint-Paul and I was able to draw people coming out of the Metro. Oh, what a feast of people, because they never knew I was there drawing them, and all that comes into my work somehow.

Peter: There can be a degree of comradeship about the Cité too with the community of artists. Did you get anything from other artists who were there?

Ann: Oh, yes. I mean I loved the ... I've got a lot of friends in Paris now. I loved meeting people. I met Swiss people and German people. People that don't speak the same language, but you can set up a...

I met this man who was Bulgarian, and he'd come to my studio. "You are great artist" and then we'd have a glass of wine. There was hardly a word of any language between us, but it was good. I'd look at his work. But he was so poor that he had to find things. He made things out of any bit of wire, or anything that he found. It's very interesting, people coming out of totally different cultures.

Peter: Yes. You find things and use them too, but that's for expressive purposes. France, of course, has had its share of abstract expressionists, or Tachists. Are there any of those French practitioners that you admire?

Ann: Well, I love the great French artists. Monet, Matisse, Picasso and Soutine. They're painters, you know. I don't particularly follow abstract expres ... abstract art.

Peter: You were also awarded a residency in Arthur Boyd's house in Italy. Were you, and the work you did there, influenced by the Italian landscape or by Italian visual culture?

Ann: That was a very different time because I took my two daughters, thinking that'd be finishing school for them which it was, and there seemed to be a lot of interruptions. So in order to save my sanity I would get on a bicycle and ride out to the landscape [inaudible] the little watercolours. I did lots of little Italian watercolours with houses and things. Also, I did a lot of small work somehow in the studio. I showed those in London, actually. Everything's part of it, everything's part of the whole.

Peter: Were there paintings by Arthur Boyd hanging in that house?

Ann: No, but there were his paints that he'd made himself and I didn't use them. But it was interesting to see them. He'd put them into tubes and ground them himself. It was interesting.

Peter: In 1978 you participated in an exhibition called "Australian Women Artists." Do you think there is a female sensibility about your work?

Ann: Maybe it's coming in now. I think an artist is ... their work comes out of the way you feel. I wouldn't deliberately be either but most of my mentors were men, I suppose. I do remember one thing better not use pink. Whereas de Kooning would be allowed to use it. I can use it now...

Peter: Have there been any difficulties that you've experienced practicing as an artist because you're a woman? I'm wondering, for example, whether being a woman made the participating in Contemporary Art Society meetings a little more difficult? Whether the role of motherhood impinged upon your own practice in a way that a man, even though the man might be having to hold down a job to support the family, might not have had to experience?

Ann: I think ... I think I sort of flew into being an artist being an artist. And gradually, I found being a woman cut out opportunities like teaching. I mean it was 16 years before I got a job teaching in Sydney. There weren't a lot of women artists ... women teach ... hardly any. But now there are a lot of women artists teaching, for instance.

So, I think I pioneered my way through quite a hard time for women. Whereas in the "Sydney Moderns" exhibition, there were quite a lot of women, weren't there? But as Margaret Olley would say, "You don't have children," and mmm ... but I'm so glad that I had children, and that I come out of being ... that I am a woman artist. It's quite a complex thing, Peter, isn't it?

To be... I mean being an artist isn't being in a man's world at all. In fact Klippel used to say, "But I don't understand, we've both got the same soul, a man and a woman." But there have been obstacles. I think being in that time was quite tough, in a way, but I'm glad I had it like that. I liked the obstacles, in a funny way. It's made me what I am.

Peter: Your closest friends in the art world, fellow artists, did they tend to be male or female?

Ann: Male, I think. See Elizabeth Cummings wasn't here, she was in Italy.

Peter: Elizabeth Cummings, if we can remind ourselves, was born within a year of your birth in Queensland too. And she, like you, might possibly be described as an abstract expressionist now.

Ann: We took different paths. She was encouraged to travel to go to art school. I was stopped, but I had to sort of fight against it. It was like pulling back an arrow. Now I can ... I'm allowed to do it ... I mean I allow myself to do it, but...

Peter: Both you and she came from somewhat intellectual backgrounds. Your family with the background in literature, her father being a professor of architecture...

Ann: Her family was more intellectual, in a way. Mine was more bookish. She said ... I remember in her interview, she said there were paintings on the wall. We had only two that I can remember, and they might have been prints.

Peter: But they were the tribal art of of grandpa's.

Ann: Yes, that's right. See, everything becomes part of what you are. And whether it's ... provided you're not stopped from doing it, I think everything can be very helpful.

Peter: You knew Margaret Olley as a child.

Ann: Growing up in Brisbane.

Peter: And she would give you advice, from time to time?

Ann: Oh yes, yes. "Stop doing that push and shove." She painted me when I was about 18. That was a really interesting experience, to go to her under-the-house studio. Mrs. Olley would bring in afternoon tea. I met some wonderful artists.

I mean I met [Ian] Fairweather, we used to go to Bribie Island, my husband, Robert Walker, and I, because he was photographing him. I had very good encounters with Ian Fairweather. And he, of course, was a great influence on my work. Because there was another real painter. His work was ... took you right out of immediate landscape into something else, some other.

Peter: Well in 1963, '64, the art critic of the "Sydney Morning Herald" described Ian Fairweather as, "The best artist in Australia."

Ann: Sure.

Peter: Did his linear qualities, his interest in abstraction, did that rub off on you, do you think?

Ann: Oh yes, it was just his painting. The way he painted. I went into his painting studio which was another hut that he made for that. There were brushes, paint, lines, not much light. These things were like living objects that he was painting. He'd say to me, "What's the lighting like in Macquarie Gallery"? So he was obviously fearful of too much light because these were ... in way he lived was tree-covered and very much about light and shade in the landscape.

Peter: And he devoted himself entirely to his life as a painter. Did you find that inspiring?

Ann: Absolutely. I thought that's what it was, that's what you had to do. Everything else became interruptions, in a way, although I learned that wasn't quite the case. That's why I just had to...It's not why, but what I do, I just have to keep at it, because something else might happen.

Peter: Has anybody, a critic, a friend, a gallerist for example, ever made a comment about your work or given you advice that was so pertinent and sharp, that you somewhat modified what you were doing?

Ann: No.

Peter: Has any critic ever written about your work something that you thought described it wonderfully?

Ann: Oh, yes, the good ones, the good critics, yes.

Peter: Can you remember any phrase that was used in a crit that you thought was absolutely dead right?

Ann: I should have had time to look this up. Terence Maloon used to say good things, and Sandra McGrath. I mean I really appreciate it when a critic can really understand what you're doing and puts a handle on it because as you can see, I'm not very good at talking about what I'm doing in words. But it's good when somebody writing about you can say things that you think, "Oh, that's interesting."

I really think I've spent a lot of time finding out things for myself that weren't written or discussed with others. Now everybody's saying them. Talking about feeling and the painting takes off itself, those sort of things, but ...

Peter: Comparatively recently, there's been a monograph published on your work. Has that been interesting to see your entire life's career documented in that way?

Ann: Yes, yes, it's, you know 'cause you can't put everything in, but it's interesting to see it unfolding, and how something you did in the '70s would sort of creep in again and turn into something else. It's like a spiralling thing. It's very satisfying to see one's work in a book.

Peter: It actually showed you recurring threads that you might not have been aware of at the time?

Ann: No, I'm aware of them. Maybe other people can see them. There probably wasn't enough sculpture in that book to show the connection between sculpture and painting.

Peter: You've made a number of powerful sculptures. They may not pursue the same fluidity and liquidity as your paintings, but do you see parallels between what you're doing in your sculptures and in your paintings?

Ann: Well, this is something that was said. Bill Gregory noticed ... noted in his essay that my sculpture and collage and painting ... my paintings are structured and they come out of the fact that I also do sculpture. But it's not something one thinks about. I just do things.

I start making things because I find things that I want to put together, disparate things. I have an idea that grows. I have things with ropes that go up to the ceiling and pulleys and not anything anyone particularly wants. But I like doing them.

Peter: Yes, yes. As well as painting and sculpture, you've also made a number of silkscreen prints and etchings. Does printmaking demand a different approach to paintings on canvas?

Ann: It's always a creative process. I might turn up at a printmaker's workshop, and it's always a bit scary because I don't know what I'm going to be doing. For instance, I was recently working with Ron McBurnie doing monoprints, and we had a few days ...

Peter: This is at Townsville...

Ann: this in Townsville. Yes, yes. Townsville is where go ... I try and go every year and make prints with him. Last time it was etchings, and this time monoprints. We sort of thought, "What the devil's going on here"? But anyway once I brought them out and home, I thought, "Well, they're pretty good," and that led then to something else.

Peter: In your house you have a number of works by Aboriginal artists, tribal art. Do you see a parallel between tribal art and your own paintings or sculptures?

Ann: In my house I don't have nearly enough Aboriginal art. I'd love to have more. But what I do have are bark paintings, and I've got some spears and some things. But I just love the fact that the way tribal art and Aboriginal art is made comes from this, let's call it, soul from inside. It has real feeling, and it's making something that is entirely new and imaginative I think. That's what I love about any tribal art, African or New Ireland art, and all of that has that thing you're getting out.

Peter: Do you ever destroy work, or do you simply continue to work on it until it's satisfactory?

Ann: Recently with my assistant Grace we've been going through all the drawers and throwing out things. It's really good. Every now and again Grace would go, [gasps]. I might even come back and work on a painting that's been illustrated if I don't like it. I don't like to have things out there that I don't like because it happens by mistake.

Peter: Is Grace the assistant who helped you with your sculptures?

Ann: No, no, no. I've had various assistants over time. But a recent one, Sarah Preese, came from London on a foundation and wanted to work with me. So I thought the only way I can really work with an assistant not just washing brushes and tidying up the studio is with sculpture. So we did a whole series a couple of years ago I think using things from palms.

Peter: Your family were greatly interested in literature with two generations of booksellers. Has that impinged on your work at all? Did you find yourself developing an interest in zen or existentialism or any theories that you found abstract expressionism was an appropriate vehicle for expressing a parallel attitude?

Ann: No. I mean I love ... I love reading and I love thinking about things, but I don't paint ideas if you know what I mean.

Peter: If you had to live your life again, are there any career decisions or practice decisions that you would have made differently?

Ann: Do you know, life is probably a series of mistakes, but so is painting. Everything is part of what you become, and I think ... I think even going through difficult things can be part of one's development. This is where art and life become one in a way, that you can't make it right. You can't plan it. You can't ... it comes through thick and thin, you know, through the mistakes, and through good luck and chance. Chance is a great thing.

Peter: Is there anything we haven't touched on that you think is important to remember in coming to an understanding of your work?

Ann: I think people often say, "How do you do that"? And that's a question I'd like to be able to answer, so that's not a good question, is it? But it's really to do with feeling it and something happens that you can just go further in your search for that other. That's what I would like to be able to explain but probably can't.

Peter: Ann Thomson, thank you.

Credits

Interviewer: Peter Pinson

Camera, lighting & sound: Cameron Glendinning

Video editing: Dr. Bob Jansen

Technical & assembly: Dr. Bob Jansen