Elisabeth Cummings : landscapes and interiors is an exhibition that will open at the Shoalhaven City Arts Centre on 13 December 2014 and run through to 21 February 2015. Curated by Max Dingle and presented in collaboration with King Street Gallery on William, Darlinghurst.
Above images supplied by King Street Gallery on William.
Above images supplied by King Street Gallery on William.
Elisabeth Cummings - Looking and Seeing
by Max Dingle
to look is to gaze your eyes upon or acknowledge presence
to see, is to understand and pay attention, to look past the obvious and take time to thoroughly enjoy.
It could be said that Elisabeth Cummings had a “dream run” when it came to supportive family and a great arts education, however having a supportive family and attending the top art education institution in Australia does not automatically confer greatness, that only happens through application, hard work, developing technical and theoretical expertise and learning how to see; to look at the work of others, to look at the world around you, and really see.
I think everything you see influences you in some way.
Elisabeth Cummings in conversation with Peter Pinson 2013
One’s eye is always attuned to relationship of colours and shapes
Elisabeth Cummings interviewed by Rosalie Higson. Weekend Australian Dec 2003
Elisabeth Cummings has been a quiet achiever, and one of Australia’s the most respected artists, for most of her artistic life the respect and celebration of her talents has been by her peers, it is only in the last few years that the “market” has discovered that Elisabeth Cummings is one of the greatest artists this country has produced.
Born in 1934, in Brisbane, to a family sympathetic to a career in the arts, her father, an architect and distinguished academic, with artist and sculptor friends and the home a display case for paintings and sculpture, in her last year in school Elisabeth started painting with Margaret Cilento and from there, with parental approval, went to Sydney and studied at the National Art School in Darlinghurst, East Sydney. Teachers included Godfrey Miller, Dorothy Thornhill, Jimmy Cook and Ralph Balson, the latter teaching Abstract Art for one class a week. Then came the first of many awards and scholarships, in 1958 Elisabeth was awarded the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship that took her to Europe with stays and studies in Paris, London and Florence then toward the end of her ten year stay in Europe she studied at the School of Vision in Salzburg under Oskar Kokoschka.
Back in Australia, in her unassuming style, Elisabeth concentrated on life, teaching at the National Art School and various institutions and being a wife and mother, all the while quietly going about her art.
Her studio, in the bush at Wedderburn came into being via Barb and Nick Romalis who donated some land for artists to set their studios, this eventually became a company title with each artist owning the bricks and mortar of their own studio. Four other artists became involved, John Peart, Roy Jackson, Joan Brassil, and Fred Braat and all worked independently, coming together socially and to discuss the management of the common company property.
The bush, the landscape, along with still life, have been keystones in Elisabeth’s art. The studio at Wedderburn has been a strong influence and subject matter, Studio in the Bush, Night Studio and Journey through the Studio all attest to this.
“Journey through the Studio” is dominated by a single colour – red – that is inflected right across the canvas by related and clashing colours: an orange –inflected brown, a deep burgundy, a pinkish red. These clashes and harmonies are lent further sensory fizz by the extraordinary variety of Cummings’s marks.
Sebastian Smee The Australian 2 November 2004
While the bush and landscape at Wedderburn feature, the artist has travelled extensively and it is the Australian landscape, from Pilbara Landscape to the At the edge of the Simpson Desert, that mark her recent work.
…in “At the edge of the Simpson Desert”, she takes a bold, up-front approach to the colours and shapes of a stark, arid environment. This dynamic landscape is also one of the most recent works in this exhibition, indicating that Cummings is in the prime of her career right now. In fact, she has yet to peak. I can’t think of a younger Australian artist who could pull off a large-scale work with comparable verve and confidence.
John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald 21 January 2012
Elisabeth Cummings’s connection to the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery Collection is through a work from the 1970’s, a landscape, Wedderburn Bush, which was acquired via a painting prize held by the Shoalhaven Council. ( There are also three works in the M G Dingle & G B Hughes Collection that is bequested to the Regional Collection.) Since then the artist has won many awards and prizes including the Fleurieu Art Prize, the Portia Geach Portrait Prize, the Mosman Prize, and the Tattersalls Art Prize and is represented in many private and public collections including Artbank, The Queensland Art Gallery, The Gold Coast City Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW.
A number of commentators have tried to look at Elisabeth Cummings’s work and assess it in relation to what it has in common with other major artists and influences, however I prefer the school of thought that it is better to assess art by its unique qualities. The thick layers of paint laid down in clashing, and contrasting harmonies, the battery of mark making and complex brushwork, all of which would require a complete book to categorise and describe. The artist seemingly veers from abstraction to figuration and back again drawing the eye into a complex lattice of bush strokes and where, as noted by John McDonald, in 2010, the artist “barely seems to recognise a dividing line between figuration and abstraction.” and “cannot be summed up in a tidy proposition but its vagueness makes it feel no less real or close at hand.”
To fully appreciate Elisabeth Cummings’s works requires the viewer’s complete attention, the works need contemplation and time to see, time to reveal the secrets held in the whirling paint, to allow things to resolve themselves into curtain or tree, a sand dune or pebble and a second viewing allows greater access or even for a different story to emerge. They are a product of seeing and analysis, the numerous sketches made by the artist while on site serve as keys to unlock the memory of shapes and colours, to help inform the painting that takes place in the studio. Each painting starts dictating where it is heading as the artist progresses, but each work also encompasses a sense of place as well as the emotions and experiences of the artist.
Everybody’s struggling to find a voice... there’s so many ways to go – the conceptual movement, abstraction, minimalism. And there are people like me, who just keep on painting what they see.
Elisabeth Cummings interviewed by Rosalie Higson. Weekend Australian Dec 2003
to look is to gaze your eyes upon or acknowledge presence
to see, is to understand and pay attention, to look past the obvious and take time to thoroughly enjoy.
It could be said that Elisabeth Cummings had a “dream run” when it came to supportive family and a great arts education, however having a supportive family and attending the top art education institution in Australia does not automatically confer greatness, that only happens through application, hard work, developing technical and theoretical expertise and learning how to see; to look at the work of others, to look at the world around you, and really see.
I think everything you see influences you in some way.
Elisabeth Cummings in conversation with Peter Pinson 2013
One’s eye is always attuned to relationship of colours and shapes
Elisabeth Cummings interviewed by Rosalie Higson. Weekend Australian Dec 2003
Elisabeth Cummings has been a quiet achiever, and one of Australia’s the most respected artists, for most of her artistic life the respect and celebration of her talents has been by her peers, it is only in the last few years that the “market” has discovered that Elisabeth Cummings is one of the greatest artists this country has produced.
Born in 1934, in Brisbane, to a family sympathetic to a career in the arts, her father, an architect and distinguished academic, with artist and sculptor friends and the home a display case for paintings and sculpture, in her last year in school Elisabeth started painting with Margaret Cilento and from there, with parental approval, went to Sydney and studied at the National Art School in Darlinghurst, East Sydney. Teachers included Godfrey Miller, Dorothy Thornhill, Jimmy Cook and Ralph Balson, the latter teaching Abstract Art for one class a week. Then came the first of many awards and scholarships, in 1958 Elisabeth was awarded the New South Wales Travelling Art Scholarship that took her to Europe with stays and studies in Paris, London and Florence then toward the end of her ten year stay in Europe she studied at the School of Vision in Salzburg under Oskar Kokoschka.
Back in Australia, in her unassuming style, Elisabeth concentrated on life, teaching at the National Art School and various institutions and being a wife and mother, all the while quietly going about her art.
Her studio, in the bush at Wedderburn came into being via Barb and Nick Romalis who donated some land for artists to set their studios, this eventually became a company title with each artist owning the bricks and mortar of their own studio. Four other artists became involved, John Peart, Roy Jackson, Joan Brassil, and Fred Braat and all worked independently, coming together socially and to discuss the management of the common company property.
The bush, the landscape, along with still life, have been keystones in Elisabeth’s art. The studio at Wedderburn has been a strong influence and subject matter, Studio in the Bush, Night Studio and Journey through the Studio all attest to this.
“Journey through the Studio” is dominated by a single colour – red – that is inflected right across the canvas by related and clashing colours: an orange –inflected brown, a deep burgundy, a pinkish red. These clashes and harmonies are lent further sensory fizz by the extraordinary variety of Cummings’s marks.
Sebastian Smee The Australian 2 November 2004
While the bush and landscape at Wedderburn feature, the artist has travelled extensively and it is the Australian landscape, from Pilbara Landscape to the At the edge of the Simpson Desert, that mark her recent work.
…in “At the edge of the Simpson Desert”, she takes a bold, up-front approach to the colours and shapes of a stark, arid environment. This dynamic landscape is also one of the most recent works in this exhibition, indicating that Cummings is in the prime of her career right now. In fact, she has yet to peak. I can’t think of a younger Australian artist who could pull off a large-scale work with comparable verve and confidence.
John McDonald, Sydney Morning Herald 21 January 2012
Elisabeth Cummings’s connection to the Shoalhaven Regional Gallery Collection is through a work from the 1970’s, a landscape, Wedderburn Bush, which was acquired via a painting prize held by the Shoalhaven Council. ( There are also three works in the M G Dingle & G B Hughes Collection that is bequested to the Regional Collection.) Since then the artist has won many awards and prizes including the Fleurieu Art Prize, the Portia Geach Portrait Prize, the Mosman Prize, and the Tattersalls Art Prize and is represented in many private and public collections including Artbank, The Queensland Art Gallery, The Gold Coast City Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of NSW.
A number of commentators have tried to look at Elisabeth Cummings’s work and assess it in relation to what it has in common with other major artists and influences, however I prefer the school of thought that it is better to assess art by its unique qualities. The thick layers of paint laid down in clashing, and contrasting harmonies, the battery of mark making and complex brushwork, all of which would require a complete book to categorise and describe. The artist seemingly veers from abstraction to figuration and back again drawing the eye into a complex lattice of bush strokes and where, as noted by John McDonald, in 2010, the artist “barely seems to recognise a dividing line between figuration and abstraction.” and “cannot be summed up in a tidy proposition but its vagueness makes it feel no less real or close at hand.”
To fully appreciate Elisabeth Cummings’s works requires the viewer’s complete attention, the works need contemplation and time to see, time to reveal the secrets held in the whirling paint, to allow things to resolve themselves into curtain or tree, a sand dune or pebble and a second viewing allows greater access or even for a different story to emerge. They are a product of seeing and analysis, the numerous sketches made by the artist while on site serve as keys to unlock the memory of shapes and colours, to help inform the painting that takes place in the studio. Each painting starts dictating where it is heading as the artist progresses, but each work also encompasses a sense of place as well as the emotions and experiences of the artist.
Everybody’s struggling to find a voice... there’s so many ways to go – the conceptual movement, abstraction, minimalism. And there are people like me, who just keep on painting what they see.
Elisabeth Cummings interviewed by Rosalie Higson. Weekend Australian Dec 2003
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