Bio
Frank Hodgkinson Sense of Place Burrinja Gallery by Jan Dirk Mittmann
Lou Klepac art historian, author and publisher praised Frank Hodgkinson “not only one of the finest Australian abstract painters, but equally a marvellous draughtsman, an exceptional etcher and a most interesting and talented writer”. Dr Colin Jack-Hinton, Emeritus and Foundation Director of Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory, as it was known then, called him in the introduction to the Hodgkinson monograph published by Beagle Press in 1994 a “prodigious artist of great distinction”.
Novelist Morris West wrote: “He is a man so various that he hardly gives you time to focus on any single one talent. He is a painter, a sculptor, an architect, a designer of habitats and ambiences. His creative energy is enormous. His curiosity is at once that of a child and a mature philosopher trying to make sense of the cosmos over which he has ranged with hunger and delight.”
Hodgkinson displayed many talents, talents, but above all his unusually strong affinity with and attraction to Aboriginal country and culture set him apart from his contemporaries. While other artists before and after him discovered Australia’s ancient landscapes and its original inhabitants, few of these returned to indigenous country as often as Hodgkinson and immersed themselves as deeply as he did.
He was very much an ‘Australian artist’, despite spending many formative years abroad. Driven by an interest to explore where and how art is developing, throughout his entire career he sought to paint, in his own words, “purposefully, not to the whims of fashion.”1 Hodgkinson strove to establish from his own “point of view a relationship with this country and the world at large,” displaying a remarkable sense of place and a uniquely Australian character.
EARLY YEARS
Francis George Hodgkinson was born in Ashfield, Sydney on 28 April 1919, youngest of five siblings to working class parents of Irish decent. One grandmother was Basque Spanish.2 His father was a signwriter and decorator. Young Frank began painting when
he was a student at Fort Street Boys High in the early 1930s. At the age of 16 he left school and apprenticed as a lithographer. For a short time, he worked as a commercial artist and later freelanced as a newspaper illustrator and press artist for The Sydney Mail and at Frank Packer’s newly founded Daily Telegraph. When World War II broke out, he went to Melbourne to join his brother Roy at The Herald.3
Hodgkinson was a talented illustrator, but his dream was to become a painter. Commercial work was a necessary means to sustain himself. At night he took up art classes at the Royal Art Society of NSW studying drawing under Sydney Long (1871–1955), and came under the tutelage of Anthony Dattilo Rubbo (1870–1955). While Long was reactionary toward modern art, Rubbo was open to new ideas. The first modern paintings in Australia emerged from Rubbo’s classes, notably those of Grace Cossington Smith (1892–1984), Roland Wakelin (1887–1971) and Sydney Long. Hodgkinson regarded Rubbo not as a great teacher but appreciated the scholarly approach. But it was Long who instilled in Hodgkinson an idea of what painting could be like and an understanding of the process of painting.
‘Segnior’ Rubbo parted from the Art Society in 1934 and set up his own school in Bligh Street. There Hodgkinson met fellow students Donald Friend (1915–1989), Wolfgang Cardamatis (1917–2010) and Wallace Thornton (1915–1991), with whom he started a sketch club at a studio in Edgecliff. He later commented about this early period of his artistic career: “It seems to be a tradition that Australian painters have learnt more from each other than in schools. Wallace had books and reproductions which opened many new horizons to me.”4
Troops cross the Kumusi River at Wairopi, Owen Stanley Ranges, New Guinea. October 1942. 61.5 x 75.5 cm
The outbreak of World War II, however, got in the way of his plans. Surmising that this could be his ticket to get away from Australia, he enlisted for a flying cadet course with the RAAF, but due to the long wait he joined the AIF in early 1940. In the course of his service he was posted to some of the most grueling war theatres. He served in North Africa and on the campaign against Vichy French in Syria. He was promoted to Sergeant in 1941 and posted to serve on the Kokoda Trail in Papua New Guinea where he was invalided out of Buna-Gona with malaria, and subsequently spent six weeks in hospital at Port Moresby.
Hodgkinson was mentioned in dispatches for conspicuous gallantry and in 1943 returned to Australia for officer cadet training.5 In 1944, as Infantry Lieutenant, he was assigned as official war artist to lead a team of artists and photographers to document the allied landings in Borneo. Donald Friend joined him during the Allies’ assaults at Balikpapan, and both witnessed Japanese surrender ceremonies and continued to practice their craft producing sketchbooks. Not surprisingly, The Disasters of War series by Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) became a strong influence.
The war experience profoundly influenced the young artist, and led him to develop a sense of fatalism which shaped his perceptions of life and nature for the rest of his life. “One was never expecting to live for very long, always aware how fragile life was. … And although I had no-one to stay alive for … . I wanted to live long enough to paint a good picture.”6
EUROPE
After the end of World War II, Hodgkinson returned to Sydney and occupied a studio loft in Point Piper, but soon decided to leave the place of his up-bringing behind. In early 1947 he boarded the Asturias to Europe, where he arrived in a war-torn, depressing London. Not long after his arrival, he turned to Paris. There his “spirits began to lift, and on the arrival in Paris roared immediately into the gaiety, the exhilarating pace and light, the openness of the city … People seemed to walk with more meaning; the Londoners had taken so much and were down …”7
He travelled from Paris to Milan and Florence, taking in galleries and the works of great artists. Back in Paris, he rented a room in the Rue St André des Arts and turned to producing sketches with pen and ink and coloured washes. These were of exquisite quality and have hardly been rivalled “in verve and evocation” by an Australian artist, and are really a precursor to Brett Whiteley’s Regard de Coté drawings, commented Barry Pearce (1916–1999), Senior Curator of Australian art at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.8
In the afternoons and evenings Hodgkinson dedicated himself to periods of study and figure drawing at L’Académie de la Grande Chaumière in the Montparnasse district of Paris. He regularly visited the Musée du Louvre where he studied the great masters. At Stanley W. Hayter’s famous Atelier Dix-Sept he took printmaking lessons. In his own words, he studied not “formally” but under “his own steam”, and continued to exercise his skill and train his eye on trips to Lausanne and Florence.
In London he studied under Bernard Meninsky at the Central School of Art and Craft. He shared loggings with Australian painters Douglas Watson and Peter Blayney, with whom he set out by car to visit Spain in early 1948. Spain, its landscapes, its history, its passion and pain had long inspired some of the world’s most passionate artists and had attracted other Australians, including Tom Roberts and Lionel Lindsay.
“It was a visit bedevilled by financial constraints and official difficulties imposed by the Franco regime,” as Barry Pearce pointed out.9 General Francisco Franco’s fascist regime ruled the country with an iron fist since the civil war in 1939. The Australians had trouble getting visas, especially after the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Dr H. V. Evatt, recently elected President of United Nations General Assembly, had openly criticised the military dictatorship. Eventually, the trio went to Madrid, where Hodgkinson visited the Museo Nacional Del Prado, and on to Toledo and Barcelona. Hodgkinson was hooked. “From that first visit … Spain captured my imagination.”10
Hodgkinson returned to London to support his ‘study’ with freelance illustration work during the week, and painting at night and on the weekend. He married Myfanwy (Van) Tudor-Jones, a dress designer he had met in Sydney after the war. The couple moved to Kensington and had a daughter, Kate.
The artist’s career slowly gained momentum as his paintings began to sell. Paintings were hung and sold in an exhibition at Gallery Dix-Neuf (19), designated for modern paintings in the summer shows at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1949 and 1950. (His great-uncle, painter and illustrator Sir John Everatt Millais (1829–1896), had been a full member of the prestigious Royal Academy and briefly its president before his death.) But the financial situation for the young family in London was difficult and in 1953, the toss of the coin decided their return to Sydney.11
After six years in Europe Hodgkinson returned to Sydney. The family stayed for a little while in a flat at Rushcutters Bay before buying a block of land overlooking the beach at Clareville in Pittwater where Hodgkinson built a house. His first sell-out solo shows at Macquarie Galleries in Sydney, and Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne in 1955, provided the funds. The property bordered on the National Park at Avalon, and the natural bush became the subjects of his studies, alongside some figurative paintings and abstract interpretations of buildings and scaffolds in the city.
Hodgkinson found that little had progressed in the art world in Sydney in the 1950s. He produced some abstract etchings, printed by Strom Gould. A strong influence by the modern Spanish artists he had seen was recognisable. When Haefliger commented “it’s as though a great hulking ill-mannered fellow had walked into a nicely conducted tea-party and burped” he referred to the raw energ Hodgkinson’s paintings brought to the fore.12 For the artist it was a sign to move on.
Sir John Everett Millais Ophelia 1851-52
oil on canvas 762 x 1118 mm - Collection - Tate Britain, London www.tate.org.uk
SPAIN
Europe, and in particular, Spain called. When in 1958 Frank Hodgkinson was awarded the inaugural Helena Rubinstein Travelling Art Prize valued at £1,000 with £300 for travelling expenses, the opportunity arose to return. The award was regarded substantial at the time and caused quite a bit of excitement in the art scene. The average annual income was £950. It was a generous contribution by a wealthy entrepreneur of a cosmetic empire in the United States, who had grown up in Australia and was keen to give back to the country of her upbringing.
Hal Missingham (1906–1994), longtime Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales organised the award, and a panel of judges invited twelve artists to submit five paintings each. Among the artists were Arthur Boyd (1920–1999), Clifton Pugh (1924–1990) and the expressionist Jon Molvig (1923–1970). The submissions were hung at the Art Gallery and represented the contemporary art scene. Hodgkinson won the award and the gallery acquired one of his paintings entitled No.1 April 1958.
“Far more robust than a lot more abstracts then being made by Sydney artists this painting, with its powerful gestures and spare colour scheme, marks a dramatic change from Hodgkinson’s earlier figurative images,” noted Barry Pearce.13 Art critic Robert Hughes commented at the time: “The shape beat blunder against one another and the paint heavily trowelled on, anticipates the brooding organic magma of his (later) Spanish canvasses.”14 Yet, reportedly, the critic did not agree with the jury’s verdict: “Hodgkinson won and on the standard of his work there he didn’t deserve to.”15
With the prize money Hodgkinson headed first to London with a letter of introduction to Lillian Summerville, Director of the British Council, presumably to spare him the visa complications experienced on the previous trip. He then continued to Paris, Greece and finally to Barcelona, from where he took the overnight ferry to Mallorca.
He visited John Olsen (1928–) who lived in Deya (Deià) with American painter Dorothy Hood (1918–2000). The small coastal village had acquired a reputation among ex-pats and became a hive of activity in summer. Painter and critic Paul Haefliger (1914–1982) and Jean Bellette (1908–1991) were also part of the small commune. Hodgkinson gave up previous plans to base himself in Greece and moved into a threestorey house. Life was simple and inexpensive. His family soon joined him in Deya.
The Death of Ignacio Sanchez Mejias (Bull fighter) 1967 Oil on Canvas Diptych 177 x 135cm each panel
Among the artists was the English poet and novelist Robert von Ranke Graves (1895–1985) who had moved to Deya in 1932. He lived in the village until his death. In the 1950s Graves was working in film. His parties attracted friends and international celebrities. One has become legendary. For Graves’ birthday in 1959 Hodgkinson and Olsen staged a play called The life and death of Ned Kelly in a grotto on the beach in front of 200 guests. Preparations and rehearsals took several weeks according to Olsen. Hodgkinson played the part of Ned Kelly.16
Other Australian artists visited, including Carl Plate (1909–1977), William Delafield Cook (1936–2015), James Gleeson (1915–2008) and his partner Frank O’Keefe (1915– 2007), Peter Blayney (1920–2014), editor and collector Mervyn Horton (1917–1982) and Brett Whiteley (1939–1992) in 1963. The days were spent painting. But in the evenings the artists got together for dinners and discussed art over wine and tapas.
In 1961 the marriage was not going well and the couple decided to separate. Van and daughter Kate returned to Sydney. Hodgkinson moved to the USA, where he lived for almost a year and exhibited in New York and Los Angeles before returning to Spain where he stayed until 1967, then moved to Rome where he remained until 1969.
Despite the periods away, it was the Spanish period that has been the most influential. Spain had become his home. His relationship to the country as a painter was unmistakable and more notable than that of the other Australian artists. He had visited it earlier than his fellow countrymen and he had deeply absorbed it. Dry landscapes, traditional culture, catholic rituals, art and the drama of bullfights left lasting impressions. In Spain he had found the essence of painting. “The primitive merges with the sophisticated, the ancient with the modern. This is the painters’ country, physically and emotionally,” he told the author John Hetherington (1907–1974) in 1962.17
Other Australian artists visited, including Carl Plate (1909–1977), William Delafield Cook (1936–2015), James Gleeson (1915–2008) and his partner Frank O’Keefe (1915– 2007), Peter Blayney (1920–2014), editor and collector Mervyn Horton (1917–1982) and Brett Whiteley (1939–1992) in 1963. The days were spent painting. But in the evenings the artists got together for dinners and discussed art over wine and tapas.
In 1961 the marriage was not going well and the couple decided to separate. Van and daughter Kate returned to Sydney. Hodgkinson moved to the USA, where he lived for almost a year and exhibited in New York and Los Angeles before returning to Spain where he stayed until 1967, then moved to Rome where he remained until 1969.
Despite the periods away, it was the Spanish period that has been the most influential. Spain had become his home. His relationship to the country as a painter was unmistakable and more notable than that of the other Australian artists. He had visited it earlier than his fellow countrymen and he had deeply absorbed it. Dry landscapes, traditional culture, catholic rituals, art and the drama of bullfights left lasting impressions. In Spain he had found the essence of painting. “The primitive merges with the sophisticated, the ancient with the modern. This is the painters’ country, physically and emotionally,” he told the author John Hetherington (1907–1974) in 1962.17
Deya de Mallorca 1959 Mixed Media on Canvas 146 x 97cm
Hodgkinson’s work became more abstract and expressionist. While his paintings in the 1950s had remained figurative, “with a leaning towards the neo-romantic”, at the end of the decade he developed a “more plastic, painterly abstraction”, according to art historian Bernard Smith (1916–2011).18 Deep, thick layers of pastes displaying burnt siennas and raw ochres among the blacks and whites provided a dynamic texture. New materials found their way into his paintings. Hodgkinson enjoyed experimenting with molten wax, employed an encaustic technique, but also used oils and polyvinyl acetate, while mixing in materials such as hessian and other matter.
“I like to build a surface, dig into it, penetrate behind the veil of reality, open it up to reveal new sensations of space, then enter and explore it. With every advance from the known to the unknown the mystery increases. It’s a wrestle to extract the mystery, to find the essence of its ecstatic silence,” he wrote to Bernard Smith.19
Hodgkinson’s artistic output from the period of 1959 to 1961 and beyond, cannot be considered without its Spanish associations. He met and exhibited with Manolo Millares (1926–1972) of the Madrid-based El Paso group of painters and Barcelona based Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), a painter, sculptor and art theorist, one Europe’s most influential abstract artists.
The El Paso group, founded by Luis Feito (1929–) and Martín Chirino (1925–) in Madrid in 1957 included Millares, Rafael Canogar (1935–), Juana Francés (1926–1990), Manuel Rivera (1927–1995), Antonio Suárez (1923–2013), Antonio Saura (1930–1998), Pablo Serrano (1908–1985) and Manuel Viola (1916–1987). It was one of the first avant-garde movements in Spain under the Franco regime. El Paso promoted informal painting, the importance of the gesture rather than geometry and the pre-eminence of the plasticity of raw materials rather than concept. The dynamism of this young group introduced abstraction to Spain and it had a profound impact on European art.
“No informal elements appeared in Hodgkinson’s new work: his aim, shared by the Madrid painters, was the containment of an obsessive image, a unique and dominant form which, directly projected, left no room for dispersion,” wrote critic Robert Hughes
(1938–2012). “It is wrong to suppose that Hodgkinson’s dead, baked and scraped textures, his piled-up layers of paint, wax and hessian, are merely ornamental or that they are passively meant to be belle matière. They dynamically extend the painting; contained in space (for Hodgkinson’s space, unlike Olsen’s, is closed and does not continue outside the frame and his forms have a totemic stillness) they force the image backwards through time: their function is direct, not metaphorical. Layer after layer of substance is built up, cut back, riven, and cratered to expose the strata of this growth, and traversed by tremulous black graphs,” Hughes observed.20
“I like to build a surface, dig into it, penetrate behind the veil of reality, open it up to reveal new sensations of space, then enter and explore it. With every advance from the known to the unknown the mystery increases. It’s a wrestle to extract the mystery, to find the essence of its ecstatic silence,” he wrote to Bernard Smith.19
Hodgkinson’s artistic output from the period of 1959 to 1961 and beyond, cannot be considered without its Spanish associations. He met and exhibited with Manolo Millares (1926–1972) of the Madrid-based El Paso group of painters and Barcelona based Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012), a painter, sculptor and art theorist, one Europe’s most influential abstract artists.
The El Paso group, founded by Luis Feito (1929–) and Martín Chirino (1925–) in Madrid in 1957 included Millares, Rafael Canogar (1935–), Juana Francés (1926–1990), Manuel Rivera (1927–1995), Antonio Suárez (1923–2013), Antonio Saura (1930–1998), Pablo Serrano (1908–1985) and Manuel Viola (1916–1987). It was one of the first avant-garde movements in Spain under the Franco regime. El Paso promoted informal painting, the importance of the gesture rather than geometry and the pre-eminence of the plasticity of raw materials rather than concept. The dynamism of this young group introduced abstraction to Spain and it had a profound impact on European art.
“No informal elements appeared in Hodgkinson’s new work: his aim, shared by the Madrid painters, was the containment of an obsessive image, a unique and dominant form which, directly projected, left no room for dispersion,” wrote critic Robert Hughes
(1938–2012). “It is wrong to suppose that Hodgkinson’s dead, baked and scraped textures, his piled-up layers of paint, wax and hessian, are merely ornamental or that they are passively meant to be belle matière. They dynamically extend the painting; contained in space (for Hodgkinson’s space, unlike Olsen’s, is closed and does not continue outside the frame and his forms have a totemic stillness) they force the image backwards through time: their function is direct, not metaphorical. Layer after layer of substance is built up, cut back, riven, and cratered to expose the strata of this growth, and traversed by tremulous black graphs,” Hughes observed.20
Deya de Mallorca 1960 Mixed Media on Board 148 x 116cm
When Hughes commented “no trace of his colours earlier charm remains: dark reds and browns, ochres and burnt yellows are contained between the lugubrious incursions of black and white and (as with Tàpies) there is no way of separating colour and material; Hodgkinson is not an illusionist: so close is their relationship between gesture, material, and colour that his paintings are self-sufficient images,”21 he intuitively described the characteristics of Hodgkinson’s work in decades to come.
As a measure of success, Hodgkinson was associated and exhibited with Spanish artists. In the catalogue for the 1961 exhibition Twenty years of vanguard painting in Spain critic Carlos Antonio Areán (1929–) wrote: “A painter of many a synthesis, gained intimately from the Spanish painting, Hodgkinson must be considered one of the best connoisseurs of the secret of the substance and new potentialities of the function of painting actually existing in Spain.”22
After an exhibition held at Sala Santa Catalina del Ateneo in Madrid in 1964, Areán praised him as “one of the most rigorous and authentic painters of the time” and “a foreigner who more than most understands the spirit, gallantry and elegance of Spain”, Colin Jack-Hinton recalled.23 Yet Areán also understood that “these associations belong to the world of elected affinities not to the real world Hodgkinson belongs … He creates his own ambience, brought from another way of life – no doubt Australia,” he wrote in Publicaciones Espanolas Cuandernoes de arte in 1965. “Hodgkinson is always Hodgkinson.”24
Throughout these years Hodgkinson spent abroad, he received many accolades. He had his first critically acclaimed, sell-out solo show in London at Drian Gallery and was selected to hang, as the only Australian artist, at the spring and autumn exhibitions at the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1961 and 1962. He was included in exhibitions in London, in Recent Australlian Painting at Whitechapel Galleries in 1961, and the Tate Gallery in 1964. Exhibitions at the Collectors Gallery in New York and the Primus Stuart Galleries in Los Angeles both were also well received.25
Despite spending most of his time in various places across Europe and the USA, Hodgkinson continued to visit Australia regularly throughout the 1960s. His first major exhibition in Sydney was at the newly established Hungry Horse Gallery. The body of work was lauded by critics and public alike.
Robert Hughes wrote enthusiastically: “To pass through one of his paintings is like traversing a section of the earths crust. His big totemic forms seem to have gone through cataclysms. He does not woo his image, he attacks it. And much of its power comes from the sullen resistance of the material it is made from.” Hughes’ praise continued: “He permits layers of the past to stake their disruptive claims on the present. In fact, the drama of Hodgkinson’s work is the drama of matter disclosing it’s own history.”26
The Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased the triptych entitled The night is a tree of pain, a large painting of three panels measuring 182 x 121 cm each. Hodgkinson had painted it at his Clareville home on Sydney’s Pittwater prior to the exhibition. It was the second work the gallery acquired for its collection (after the 1958 Rubinstein Award) and paid a record price of 800 guineas, at the time the highest amount ever paid in Australia for a work of abstract art.
In a letter to the gallery Hodgkinson wrote from London (on the way to Spain): “The title ... is a line from a forgotten Indian poem ... not intended to be descriptive but rather to suggest a mood. Though the forms relate to earthy natural growth, human and animal life, the image which teased me was the monumental stillness of totems, a symmetry suggested by the gum tree, natural totems rather than the carved and painted aboriginal ones, creating a tortured and ecstatic silence such as may be experienced in the bush at night”.28
The Australian landscape of the Pittwater-Hawkesbury region had provided Hodgkinson with fresh stimulus. “By applying the combined knowledge of abstract expressionism and the texture school of Spain I produced a series of paintings of totemic images based upon the duality of the human figure and the bulky torsos of weather-scarred angophoras.” Yet, with the success of the Hungry Horse exhibition Hodgkinson found himself at crossroads of his creative career, whether to pursue “the search into the Australian landscapes or seeking further knowledge in the older cultures of Europe”.29
As a measure of success, Hodgkinson was associated and exhibited with Spanish artists. In the catalogue for the 1961 exhibition Twenty years of vanguard painting in Spain critic Carlos Antonio Areán (1929–) wrote: “A painter of many a synthesis, gained intimately from the Spanish painting, Hodgkinson must be considered one of the best connoisseurs of the secret of the substance and new potentialities of the function of painting actually existing in Spain.”22
After an exhibition held at Sala Santa Catalina del Ateneo in Madrid in 1964, Areán praised him as “one of the most rigorous and authentic painters of the time” and “a foreigner who more than most understands the spirit, gallantry and elegance of Spain”, Colin Jack-Hinton recalled.23 Yet Areán also understood that “these associations belong to the world of elected affinities not to the real world Hodgkinson belongs … He creates his own ambience, brought from another way of life – no doubt Australia,” he wrote in Publicaciones Espanolas Cuandernoes de arte in 1965. “Hodgkinson is always Hodgkinson.”24
Throughout these years Hodgkinson spent abroad, he received many accolades. He had his first critically acclaimed, sell-out solo show in London at Drian Gallery and was selected to hang, as the only Australian artist, at the spring and autumn exhibitions at the Musee d’Art Moderne in Paris in 1961 and 1962. He was included in exhibitions in London, in Recent Australlian Painting at Whitechapel Galleries in 1961, and the Tate Gallery in 1964. Exhibitions at the Collectors Gallery in New York and the Primus Stuart Galleries in Los Angeles both were also well received.25
Despite spending most of his time in various places across Europe and the USA, Hodgkinson continued to visit Australia regularly throughout the 1960s. His first major exhibition in Sydney was at the newly established Hungry Horse Gallery. The body of work was lauded by critics and public alike.
Robert Hughes wrote enthusiastically: “To pass through one of his paintings is like traversing a section of the earths crust. His big totemic forms seem to have gone through cataclysms. He does not woo his image, he attacks it. And much of its power comes from the sullen resistance of the material it is made from.” Hughes’ praise continued: “He permits layers of the past to stake their disruptive claims on the present. In fact, the drama of Hodgkinson’s work is the drama of matter disclosing it’s own history.”26
The Art Gallery of New South Wales purchased the triptych entitled The night is a tree of pain, a large painting of three panels measuring 182 x 121 cm each. Hodgkinson had painted it at his Clareville home on Sydney’s Pittwater prior to the exhibition. It was the second work the gallery acquired for its collection (after the 1958 Rubinstein Award) and paid a record price of 800 guineas, at the time the highest amount ever paid in Australia for a work of abstract art.
In a letter to the gallery Hodgkinson wrote from London (on the way to Spain): “The title ... is a line from a forgotten Indian poem ... not intended to be descriptive but rather to suggest a mood. Though the forms relate to earthy natural growth, human and animal life, the image which teased me was the monumental stillness of totems, a symmetry suggested by the gum tree, natural totems rather than the carved and painted aboriginal ones, creating a tortured and ecstatic silence such as may be experienced in the bush at night”.28
The Australian landscape of the Pittwater-Hawkesbury region had provided Hodgkinson with fresh stimulus. “By applying the combined knowledge of abstract expressionism and the texture school of Spain I produced a series of paintings of totemic images based upon the duality of the human figure and the bulky torsos of weather-scarred angophoras.” Yet, with the success of the Hungry Horse exhibition Hodgkinson found himself at crossroads of his creative career, whether to pursue “the search into the Australian landscapes or seeking further knowledge in the older cultures of Europe”.29
Land of the Critical Grasshopper 1962 Acrylic on Board 139 x 57cm
Back in Spain Hodgkinson experienced limitations when several of his works in an exhibition at Madrid’s Sala del Prado were considered to have sexual references in the “voluptuous interplay of figurative landforms” and censored by the Franco regime. The censorship drew international attention. Consequently the works remained under lock for several months. Critic Carlos Areán celebrated Hodgkinson as “one of the very few foreigners to understand and cross the boundaries”.30
Until Hodgkinson moved to Italy in 1969 he immersed himself even deeper into Spanish culture, the poetry of Federico Garcia Lorca (1998–1936) and the symbolism of traditional bullfight. Lorca’s poetry proved to be a major influence: “He showed me his Spain and then I started to see it afresh. My inquiry, a search among images past and present, has been three-pronged … metaphorically, the life of blood, the life-giving sun and the blood-letting sun,” Hodgkinson wrote in the introduction to the catalogue for his exhibition at Sydney’s David Jones Art Gallery in 1968.31 Barry Pearce saw in this a connection to Hodgkinson’s wartime, a sense of fatalism that he had experienced which resonated with the Spanish idea that life and death were two sides of the same thing.32
Hodgkinson’s paintings, based on the poetry of Lorca, were exhibited at Skinner Galleries during the Perth Festival in 1968. Surprisingly, they indicated a turn away from the oeuvre of the Spanish period. “Some of these works veered dangerously towards illustrative decoration, for hard-edge colour painting was in the air and Hodgkinson attuned himself to a move away from gesture, tone and heavy texture … he had taken the Spanish theme as far he wanted.”33
Charles Court, Western Australia’s Minister for Development, had opened his exhibition in Perth and invited him to travel to the north-west of the state. The journey again stirred his interest in the Australian landscape and would result in his return to Australia at the end of 1970.34 In Europe, art historian Bernard Smith summarised, Hodgkinson had achieved “maturity” under the influence of the ‘Spanish School’.35
He was ready to apply this experience to the Australian landscape. “After years in Europe, Australia seemed a new and young country. I had to rediscover it – to get into the landscape and allow it to get inside me,” he wrote in the autobiographical part to his monograph.36
DUNMOOCHIN
The time in Italy set into motion the return to Australia. Hodgkinson lived in an Etruscan village near Rome with his second wife Phyllida, whom he had met in Mallorca and had a second child, Leon. Yet, he found he could not paint. The landscape appeared as a “well-tended garden”, and he missed the primeval mystery of the land that had inspired him in Spain and Australia.
The decision to pack up was made within 24 hours before Christmas and, via Port Moresby, the family few into Cairns and took up a cottage at Lyon’s Point at Trinity Bay. The tropical landscape of beaches, tidal mangroves and the ocean influenced his next body of works, which were exhibited at Rudy Komon Gallery in May 1971. These confirmed a departure from previous materials and resulted in paintings with a textureless and hard-edged quality.
Hodgkinson wrote in the introduction to the exhibition catalogue: “These works came out of the sound and force of flood, the sensual stretch and spread of water under bursts of insatiable sun and the natural child of that coupling, astonishing tropical growth.”37
In Queensland, Phyllida found it difficult to adapt to the Australian climate and life-style. The marriage was in trouble. Eventually, Phyllida decided to return to Europe with Leon and to take care of the properties she and Frank had developed together in Mallorca and Italy.
At this stage Hodgkinson received an invitation from Clifton Pugh to visit him at Dunmoochin, his property at Cottles Bridge near Hurstbridge in Melbourne’s north‑east. Pugh had bought 15 acres of bushland a decade earlier, and it had become an artists’ colony and a regular meeting place since the late 1960s.
At Dunmoochin, Hodgkinson met fellow artists Fred Williams (1927–1982) and Albert Tucker (1914–1999) who joined him on painting excursions into the surrounding bush. John Perceval (1923–2000), Arthur Boyd (1920–1999), Mirka Mora (1928–) and Rick Amor (1948–) were guests as well. John Olsen had moved there a couple of years earlier. Hodgkinson had got to know Olsen well in Spain, when Olsen had based himself in Deya on the island of Majorca in the late 1950s.
Tide of Dead Fish (Lake Eyre) 1975 Goauche on Paper 75 x 53cm
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John Olsen, Lake Eyre
1975
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The Australian landscape and the bush in which Dunmoochin’s cottages were set, among wattles and gums, appealed to the artists. They painted en plein air and built mud brick dwellings. The communal kitchen at Dunmoochin was a “mad place” according to Olsen, loud and chaotic.38
Clifton Pugh had returned from Paris where he, like Hodgkinson, had spent three months studying printmaking techniques at Atelier Dix-Sept (17), a workshop run by renown British artist Stanley W. Hayter. Hayter was a master of innovative etching techniques and kindled in his students the excitement of the etching process, and the notion that process was more important than the finished product.39
Pugh and Olsen, who also had learned etching at Atelier 17, had recently purchased an etching press and operated it at Dunmoochin. Pugh was keen to experiment with the oil viscosity etching process, and his enthusiasm inspired Hodgkinson. Subsequently, Hodgkinson produced two series of prints in 1971, Inside the Landscape and Landscape Inside. Roger Butler, Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Australia wrote in 1997: “In his figurative landscapes, time-worn lines become rich and sensuous — full of colour and texture in a joyous celebration of female and landscape forms.”40
Clifton Pugh had returned from Paris where he, like Hodgkinson, had spent three months studying printmaking techniques at Atelier Dix-Sept (17), a workshop run by renown British artist Stanley W. Hayter. Hayter was a master of innovative etching techniques and kindled in his students the excitement of the etching process, and the notion that process was more important than the finished product.39
Pugh and Olsen, who also had learned etching at Atelier 17, had recently purchased an etching press and operated it at Dunmoochin. Pugh was keen to experiment with the oil viscosity etching process, and his enthusiasm inspired Hodgkinson. Subsequently, Hodgkinson produced two series of prints in 1971, Inside the Landscape and Landscape Inside. Roger Butler, Senior Curator at the National Gallery of Australia wrote in 1997: “In his figurative landscapes, time-worn lines become rich and sensuous — full of colour and texture in a joyous celebration of female and landscape forms.”40
Inside the Landscape III 1971 Oil on Board 92 x 77cm
These works broke new ground in colour and texture printing, complementing the most interesting and innovative prints produced in Australia in the early 1970s according to the critics, who compared them with those of Brett Whiteley, George Baldessin and Fred Williams. As the prints from these series were not published in significant numbers they remained relatively little known. Yet their inclusion in an exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia in 1999 titled Landscapes in sets and series presented them alongside the prints of Janet Dawson, Lloyd Rees, John Olsen, Fred Williams and Salvatore Zofrea and brought them to new prominence.41
At Dunmoochin, Hodgkinson and Pugh also produced a book of prints with poems by Harry Roschenko (who had travelled to Hiroshima with Albert Tucker in 1947), titled IS – one of the first artist collaborations in Australia, according to Anne McDonald.42 Hodgkinson shared not only Pugh’s enthusiasm for printmaking techniques. It was also his friend’s appreciation for the Aboriginal culture that sparked his interest. In the mid-1950s Pugh had travelled across the Nullarbor Plain to Perth then north to the Kimberley. On this journey he had encountered Aboriginal rituals and customs and was fascinated. He wrote to art historian Bernard Smith in 1959:
“Art must be indigenous … arising out of the environment and background of a particular place and time. This could be nationalistic but I prefer to call it geographical art. For instance, Chinese and Mexican art reflect the background and the ‘soul’ of the country but are also universal ... I therefore believe very much in the development of an Australian art – it is the only truth for us to express to the rest of the world.”43
Hodgkinson also met potter Kathleen Ratten who was renting kiln space and living at Dunmoochin. At the end of 1971 both left the artists’ colony. In a caravan they set off to the Coorong in South Australia, on to Adelaide and the Flinders Ranges. The rugged landscape impressed as much as Kata Tjuta (The Olgas), the landmark mountain range near Uluru in the heart of Australia, back then known as Ayers Rock.
After an additional road trip to North Queensland, the couple moved to Sydney. They married in 1976 and looked for a block of land. “We looked around the Hawkesbury River sandstone country – I’ve been spooked by that landscape ever since those early Sunday School picnics at Patonga and Berowa – the mystery of the Australian bush I later read about in Kangaroo by D.H. Lawrence,” he recalled.44
Hodgkinson designed and built a house made of local stone and recycled timber in Kenthurst north of Sydney. Home and studio were spectacularly perched on steep cliffs in the forest above O’Hara’s Creek from which Bidjigal leader Pemulwuy (c.1750–1802) led his resistance fight against the British intruders. “An eagle’s nest with a bird’s eye view of the tall tree tops,” he called it.45 They named the property Geebung after the trees, which grow in the area. It was to become their home and Hodgkinson’s creative and spiritual base for the next three decades.
The massive angophora eucalypt outside Hodgkinson’s studio he called his Mont St Victoria, his “Rouen Cathedral”.46 He created drawings of twisted tree trunks and banksia seeds, nude and organic forms. The immediate environment, its rocks, trees and the spirit of Aboriginal existence became inspirations for his art. Finally, Hodgkinson had found his place in the Australian bush. At the house-warming Rudy Komon, looking at the gorge below commented, “this is how the artist should live – dangerously”.47
For the next two decades he and Kathleen continued to travel – Europe, New Guinea and, eventually, to the Top End of Australia. A trip to Lake Eyre (Kati Thunda) in 1975 with a party included John Olsen, Tim Storrier (1949–) and ornithologist Vincent Serventy (1916–2007). Unusually, the ‘dead heart’ of the continent was filled with water, only for the second time on European record, and was beaming with life.
Pearce observed: “In the works that Olsen and Hodgkinson produced, both in sketchbooks, fashioned with the acuity of zoologists and in paintings worked up later, a fundamental difference in approach between the two emerged that had been hinted at in 1963 by Robert Hughes, when he said: “Where Olsen suggests a flow of time by piling up incidents within his pictures, Hodgkinson implies it by suggestion of growth and decay. At Lake Eyre one artist was awed by the capacity of nature for renewal; the other moved more by the brooding inevitability of death.”48 Typically, at Lake Eyre, Hodgkinson felt the great circle of life, which had become so much part of his philosophy in the Spanish period.
Angophora Dance Totems 1996 Oil on Canvas Tryptych 153 x 93cm each panel
PAPUA NEW GUINEA
In 1976 Hodgkinson was invited to judge an art award in Port Moresby, New Guinea, where he had not been to since the war. The visit led to an artist-in-residence at the National Art School at the University of Papua New Guinea the following year. The country had just won its independence in 1975. Academics and artists in the young country were beaming with hope and enthusiasm.
A week-long trip along the Sepik River in a dug-out canoe with Kathleen in March 1977 “really grabbed” him, he confessed. As usual when travelling he produced a diary, which was dedicated to the people of the Sepik. “The river folk know that art and life are inseparable, that beauty is experienced before it is conceptualised,” he wrote in the dedication. The diary was filled with pen and wash illustrations of tribal art, carvings and masks, spirit houses and local fauna. Detailed handwritten notes from the journey accompanied the illustrations. The book was first published by Richard Griffin as the Sepik Diary in 1982, and later republished with colour illustrations.
For a brief period Hodgkinson painted canvasses filled with bright greens, a colour that he was never “happy” with and “became a problem”. Subsequently, he had his Australian supplier send tubes of all existing shades of green and painted several canvasses.49 The painting I want you green was acquired by the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery. The lush environments of the dense rainforest and its tribal inhabitants inspired him. Pearce suggested that his stay in New Guinea reminded him of the tropical Top End of Australia and how little he knew about this part of his native country.50
In 1976 Hodgkinson was invited to judge an art award in Port Moresby, New Guinea, where he had not been to since the war. The visit led to an artist-in-residence at the National Art School at the University of Papua New Guinea the following year. The country had just won its independence in 1975. Academics and artists in the young country were beaming with hope and enthusiasm.
A week-long trip along the Sepik River in a dug-out canoe with Kathleen in March 1977 “really grabbed” him, he confessed. As usual when travelling he produced a diary, which was dedicated to the people of the Sepik. “The river folk know that art and life are inseparable, that beauty is experienced before it is conceptualised,” he wrote in the dedication. The diary was filled with pen and wash illustrations of tribal art, carvings and masks, spirit houses and local fauna. Detailed handwritten notes from the journey accompanied the illustrations. The book was first published by Richard Griffin as the Sepik Diary in 1982, and later republished with colour illustrations.
For a brief period Hodgkinson painted canvasses filled with bright greens, a colour that he was never “happy” with and “became a problem”. Subsequently, he had his Australian supplier send tubes of all existing shades of green and painted several canvasses.49 The painting I want you green was acquired by the PNG National Museum and Art Gallery. The lush environments of the dense rainforest and its tribal inhabitants inspired him. Pearce suggested that his stay in New Guinea reminded him of the tropical Top End of Australia and how little he knew about this part of his native country.50
The Yellow River PNG 1976 Oil on Canvas 93 x 122cm
ARNHEM LAND
A brief artist-in-residence at University of Melbourne followed, which resulted in a series of prints produced by Druckma Press in Melbourne in 1979. Hodgkinson and his wife then went on to travel through India, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, visiting museums and looking at collections. On the way back they stopped over in Darwin meeting with Dr Colin Jack-Hinton, Director of Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory.
“Returning from New Guinea I realised that my knowledge of the north of my own country was limited to that trip to the north-west in 1968. I wanted to see more before Tourism and Mining changed it irrevocably,” he noted.51
Waiting for the billy pot to boil one morning in a bush camp at Muirella Creek, Jack-Hinton and Hodgkinson came up with the idea of annual artists-in-the-field camps similarly to Hodgkinson’s artist-in-residence in Port Moresby.52
Jack-Hinton recalled: “It occurred to us that not only would the organisation of a camp provide artists with the opportunity to work in one of the most fascinating and inspiring ambiences, but it would also allow us to extend our permanent collection along existing policy lines, with works relative to or inspired by the area, by ensuring that such works did exist.”53
The camps were eventually formalised and sponsored by the Museum, titled ‘The Northern Territory Museums Artist Camps’. Subsequent exhibitions followed in Darwin. The program attracted artists including Clifton Pugh, Tim Storrier, Colin Lanceley (1938–2015), David Dridan (1932–), Richard Tipping (1949–), David Aspden (1935–2005), Sandra Leveson (1944–) and John Firth Smith (1943–), who all joined Hodgkinson on the bush camp and shared his admiration for the country.
Pearce noted: “Hodgkinson shared above all with his younger colleagues the sense of discovering domains of Australia outside the comfortable boundaries of the Eastern seaboard. He was, in some ways, encouraging the completion of those voyages of artistic curiosity about the unknown Terra Australis stimulated by European explorers who had set out to discover it many centuries before.”54
Until 1987, Hodgkinson made more or less annual trips to the Northern Territory, spending weeks and months in the Top End’s Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land. He immersed himself in legends, rituals, art forms, geology, natural history, meteorology and question of origins. Jack-Hinton, wrote in the foreword to Kakadu and the Arnhem Landers: “Hodgkinson must have spent more time than any other acknowledged Australian artist in Arnhem Land.”
Romanticism dominated Australian painting, noted Robert Hughes in the late 1960s, and it “cropped up constantly unselfconsciously, obsessively” he observed. “One of the characteristics of a romantic sensibility is that landscape is not simply a passive thing you sit down and paint: it is the physical form of a human emotion.”
Hodgkinson, like some contemporaries of his time, displayed this sensibility. “His finest achievements, which are among the masterpieces of Australian expressionism, have been inspired by landscape,” commented Bernard Smith.55
A brief artist-in-residence at University of Melbourne followed, which resulted in a series of prints produced by Druckma Press in Melbourne in 1979. Hodgkinson and his wife then went on to travel through India, Turkey, Greece, Italy and France, visiting museums and looking at collections. On the way back they stopped over in Darwin meeting with Dr Colin Jack-Hinton, Director of Museums and Art Galleries of the Northern Territory.
“Returning from New Guinea I realised that my knowledge of the north of my own country was limited to that trip to the north-west in 1968. I wanted to see more before Tourism and Mining changed it irrevocably,” he noted.51
Waiting for the billy pot to boil one morning in a bush camp at Muirella Creek, Jack-Hinton and Hodgkinson came up with the idea of annual artists-in-the-field camps similarly to Hodgkinson’s artist-in-residence in Port Moresby.52
Jack-Hinton recalled: “It occurred to us that not only would the organisation of a camp provide artists with the opportunity to work in one of the most fascinating and inspiring ambiences, but it would also allow us to extend our permanent collection along existing policy lines, with works relative to or inspired by the area, by ensuring that such works did exist.”53
The camps were eventually formalised and sponsored by the Museum, titled ‘The Northern Territory Museums Artist Camps’. Subsequent exhibitions followed in Darwin. The program attracted artists including Clifton Pugh, Tim Storrier, Colin Lanceley (1938–2015), David Dridan (1932–), Richard Tipping (1949–), David Aspden (1935–2005), Sandra Leveson (1944–) and John Firth Smith (1943–), who all joined Hodgkinson on the bush camp and shared his admiration for the country.
Pearce noted: “Hodgkinson shared above all with his younger colleagues the sense of discovering domains of Australia outside the comfortable boundaries of the Eastern seaboard. He was, in some ways, encouraging the completion of those voyages of artistic curiosity about the unknown Terra Australis stimulated by European explorers who had set out to discover it many centuries before.”54
Until 1987, Hodgkinson made more or less annual trips to the Northern Territory, spending weeks and months in the Top End’s Kakadu National Park and Arnhem Land. He immersed himself in legends, rituals, art forms, geology, natural history, meteorology and question of origins. Jack-Hinton, wrote in the foreword to Kakadu and the Arnhem Landers: “Hodgkinson must have spent more time than any other acknowledged Australian artist in Arnhem Land.”
Romanticism dominated Australian painting, noted Robert Hughes in the late 1960s, and it “cropped up constantly unselfconsciously, obsessively” he observed. “One of the characteristics of a romantic sensibility is that landscape is not simply a passive thing you sit down and paint: it is the physical form of a human emotion.”
Hodgkinson, like some contemporaries of his time, displayed this sensibility. “His finest achievements, which are among the masterpieces of Australian expressionism, have been inspired by landscape,” commented Bernard Smith.55
The Artist Camp; Clifton Pugh & Dr Colin Jack-Hinton in Arnhem Land 1980 Oil on Canvas 135.5 x 197.5 cm
In 1987 he published the beautifully illustrated and handwritten diary Kakadu and the Arnhem Landers. The large-format book with over 300 pages was a significant achievement and a milestone in Hodgkinson’s creative career, it displays his various talents in drawing, illustration, painting and writing.
Work on the book began in May 1978 and it became a collection of moments, impressions and anecdotes from seven years of journeys through Kakadu and Arnhem Land. It followed on from, and refers in parts to, the Sepik Diary, which displays the same fascination with wilderness and its inhabitants, flora and fauna. Royalties from the book were used to set up a fund for research into rock art.56 It was reprinted in 1990.
“Hodgkinson’s story-telling is nearly as good as his painting,” commented Roger Green in his review of the book for The Canberra Times.57 Yet, Barry Pearce, was not convinced. Pearce labeled the artist’s return to the figurative drawing of animals and
man as symbols a “collision” of his talents.58
With accurate colour illustrations and the poetic language of a careful observer, Hodgkinson documented his impressions and tells anecdotes about meeting rock expert George Chaloupka (1932–2011), Gagudju elder ‘Big’ Bill Neidji (c.1920–2002), Gundjeihmi traditional owner Nipper Kaparigi, whom he painted in oil, and a young Mr G Yunupingu (1971–2017).
Despite all his admiration for the place, Hodgkinson is not a one-eyed observer. In the diary he records the history of the failed settlement, as well as observations about environmental damage caused by introduced buffalo. He displays no illusions, no romanticism about the place: “It could have been paradise and no doubt it was a short time ago. Fibre and iron shanties, junked cars and the inevitable glitter of beer cans identify this as another disastrous attempt to bring Aborigines into the twentieth century.”
On a morning excursion to Jim Jim Falls his local guides George and David “were merry before we hit the rough country”, he noted unamused. Rare hints of criticism about hygiene and lack of self-determination of the Gunwinggu people of Arnhem Land appear in the diary,59 mixed in with the occasional pinch of humour. In strong winds off Knocker Bay he noted: “It’s difficult to draw in the rain on a rolling boat.”60
He learnt from his Gunwinggu (Kunwinjku or Gunwinjg) guides about rock art and local myths. Fascinated, he contemplated the nature of the famous rock art paintings at Ubirr (Obiri) rock shelter and finds elements of abstraction: “Here I am referring to abstraction of idea not of image because it is obvious the subject matter was intended to be representational.”61
The Aboriginal philosophy challenged him. When he asked about the purpose of his visit he responded “to sketch the landscapes”. “What is landscape?” was the reply. At the end of his lengthy journey Hodgkinson was offered skin brothership; the artist asked himself self-reflectively: “Have I earned it?”62
For Hodgkinson the journey was one of self-discovery. “I am attempting through my work to establish from my own point of view a relationship with this country and the world at large.”63 In Arnhem Land as well as in Spain 30 years earlier, he found what he was looking for: “It seems art and nature constantly imitate one another to stimulate fresh ways of looking at things … even the spirits of the uninitiated are lifted by the beauty of rendition.”64
A selection of prints from the Arnhem Experience were produced by Max Miller in East Kangaloon, New South Wales in 1980, and from the Arnhem Suite in 1981, for a series of limited edition books. Miller also suggested to Hodgkinson the production of a larger work, which resulted in a 5.2 metre by one metre etching of a crocodile. Miller applied the difficult aquatint starlight method, which presented significant technical challenges to the artists due to the size of the print. The massive final work adorned the walls of the new Parliament House in Canberra in May 1988. The Queen and Prince Phillip attended the official opening.65
It was Arnhem Land that continued to capture Hodgkinson’s admiring attention in following years. He painted in the changing conditions of dry and wet seasons, but eventually departed from the images of ‘scorched earth’ in mid-1980s. Increasingly, he opened himself up to the shimmering blues and greens of the Arafura Sea. He recorded: “Like painting, the sea presents a surface: elements float on it and recede in depth. The sea is at one time the substance and the mirror of nature, reflecting each atmospheric whim.”66
Aquagenesis III 1993 Gouache on Paper 76 x 57cm
He prepared a body of paintings of Sydney’s waterways, which was exhibited in the cities of the eastern seaboard with mixed success. The Age art critic Gary Catalano noted that “Hodgkinson is interested not particularly in form but in space. Every mark he makes is directed towards the creation of a shining and indeterminate space. We swim in the water, we swim in the air … a clear homage to the life of the body … .”67
Hodgkinson commented: “For many years I had painted the scorched earth and smouldering haze of Arnhem Land. At the ‘Top End’ the emerald-edged water of the Arafura Sea seemed impossibly exotic: a palette of cool blues and greens ludicrous. Back in Sydney glimpses of waterfront teased the eye, uplifting the spirit, demanded expression and turned my vision from earth to fire to that other element – water, out of which came light.”68
Shortly after the Waterfront series was exhibited, he and Kathleen travelled to Africa with daughter Zoe. A further journey to Arnhem Land in the early 1990s resulted in the extensive Beginnings painting series, a range of works on paper exploring ‘forms forming’.
The elaborate series is a result of over 16 journeys in 13 years to Arnhem Land, in particular from a visit to Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile) in 1991. The area with ancient rock formations dating back millions of years is a sacred site for Aboriginal ceremonies, and bewitched the artist. There Hodgkinson became aware of funeral rites in which mummified bodies laced to poles were projected from elaborately painted crevices.69 Most prominently among the rock art paintings featured the Rainbow Serpent, which is the central and most common ancestral creator being among Aboriginal people across Australia.
A selection of works from the Beginnings series was exhibited at Sherman Galleries in 1993. Hodgkinson was fascinated as much by the ancient landscape as the deep‑rooted traditions. “The exhibition itself is a journey into the unknown, yet oddly familiar, landscape: a still landscape awaiting a tempest; a rocky landscape of spiky growth; a skeletal landscape; an x-rayed landscape of forms forming, kangaroos, crocodiles, barramundi, magpies geese, brolgas, flying foxes, x-rayed sugar gliders cycling the void of the universe and fish netted in a heavenly conciliation,” he wrote.70
Understanding the need to transcend the artist’s obligation to explore and explain the world beyond the “frontiers of ordinary consciousness” and “accepted realities” further, he accepted the idea that these ancient rock art paintings held “no meaning as such”. Meaning, he explained, was a concept only useful to the gallery visitor while being exposed to the artwork.
Hodgkinson declared his intentions: “I search for a formal sense penetrating far below conscious levels thought and feeling, sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back. Such a formal sense works through meanings, fuses the old and obliterates the trite, the current, the new and the surprising; the most ancient and the most civilised mentally.”71
BUNGLE BUNGLES
In 1994 Lou Klepac’s Beagle Press published the monograph Hodgkinson with an introduction by Barry Pearce, and a foreword by author and playwright Morris West (1916–1999). West wrote, full of praise: “Frank Hodgkinson is a prodigy. He is a man so various that he hardly gives you the time to focus on any single one talent.” In 1999 Hodgkinson was awarded a Membership of the Order of Australia for services to the visual arts. In public, he downplayed the award, but secretly he was very pleased to receive it.
Despite poor health he and Kathleen continued to travel, to New York and St Petersburg, where Hodgkinson was able to view works by one of his favourite and most influential artists, Henri Matisse. Hodgkinson was unable to paint on this journey. But it seems fitting that his last major body of work was based on an Australian subject matter, the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia.
A trip to the World Heritage listed mountain range, located in Purnululu National Park of the Kimberley region, was the artist’s last painting journey in 2000. Hodgkinson surveyed the great expanse and impressive formations of the range in a tiny helicopter. He sketched daily in the field and later completed the series in his studio, up to his death in October 2001.
“Walking and painting in these gorges was tough – for the first time, Frank let me carry his paint case, as we scrambled across dry creek beds, clambered stony ravines so deep and narrow as to be able to touch both sides of the chasms with outstretched arms. We shared the sense that this was it – as indeed it proved to be – his last painting journey.” Kate Hodgkinson
The complete series was exhibited posthumously at Wagner Galleries in Sydney in 2006 entitled Frank Hodgkinson – Soaring the Bungles. “Though earthbound experiences in the gorges and creek beds of the Bungle Bungles fired studies of unique texture, form and colour it was flying over them that sparked the sense of levitation in these paintings,” Hodgkinson commented.
“Particularly in the tiniest of helicopters without restricting doors, I felt as free as a bird to hover, soar, touch down on smooth domes and pot-holed beehives of sandstone and to perch on the fans of Livistona palms.72 An exhilarating sensation opening a vision, direct and abrupt. It crystallised a lifetime of dreams in colour of levitation, surreal yet so real – abstraction counterfeiting realism.”73
On 20 October 2001, Frank Hodgkinson passed away peacefully in his home surrounded by his family. In his lifetime Hodgkinson had produced a prodigious amount of work and shown an incredible depth of personal involvement. To the end, totality had become the source of his inspiration, not just the changing landscapes. “I am attempting through my work to establish from my own point of view a relationship with this country and the world at large,” he explained.74
An outstanding observer, he was an artist with a remarkable ability to look beyond the visible and an unmatched capacity to visualise artistically what he saw. “Art,” he mused, “is an act of divination by entrails, not a careful record of the obviously seen … I find it necessary to sleepwalk a little”.75
Hodgkinson commented: “For many years I had painted the scorched earth and smouldering haze of Arnhem Land. At the ‘Top End’ the emerald-edged water of the Arafura Sea seemed impossibly exotic: a palette of cool blues and greens ludicrous. Back in Sydney glimpses of waterfront teased the eye, uplifting the spirit, demanded expression and turned my vision from earth to fire to that other element – water, out of which came light.”68
Shortly after the Waterfront series was exhibited, he and Kathleen travelled to Africa with daughter Zoe. A further journey to Arnhem Land in the early 1990s resulted in the extensive Beginnings painting series, a range of works on paper exploring ‘forms forming’.
The elaborate series is a result of over 16 journeys in 13 years to Arnhem Land, in particular from a visit to Awunbarna (Mount Borradaile) in 1991. The area with ancient rock formations dating back millions of years is a sacred site for Aboriginal ceremonies, and bewitched the artist. There Hodgkinson became aware of funeral rites in which mummified bodies laced to poles were projected from elaborately painted crevices.69 Most prominently among the rock art paintings featured the Rainbow Serpent, which is the central and most common ancestral creator being among Aboriginal people across Australia.
A selection of works from the Beginnings series was exhibited at Sherman Galleries in 1993. Hodgkinson was fascinated as much by the ancient landscape as the deep‑rooted traditions. “The exhibition itself is a journey into the unknown, yet oddly familiar, landscape: a still landscape awaiting a tempest; a rocky landscape of spiky growth; a skeletal landscape; an x-rayed landscape of forms forming, kangaroos, crocodiles, barramundi, magpies geese, brolgas, flying foxes, x-rayed sugar gliders cycling the void of the universe and fish netted in a heavenly conciliation,” he wrote.70
Understanding the need to transcend the artist’s obligation to explore and explain the world beyond the “frontiers of ordinary consciousness” and “accepted realities” further, he accepted the idea that these ancient rock art paintings held “no meaning as such”. Meaning, he explained, was a concept only useful to the gallery visitor while being exposed to the artwork.
Hodgkinson declared his intentions: “I search for a formal sense penetrating far below conscious levels thought and feeling, sinking to the most primitive and forgotten, returning to the origin and bringing something back. Such a formal sense works through meanings, fuses the old and obliterates the trite, the current, the new and the surprising; the most ancient and the most civilised mentally.”71
BUNGLE BUNGLES
In 1994 Lou Klepac’s Beagle Press published the monograph Hodgkinson with an introduction by Barry Pearce, and a foreword by author and playwright Morris West (1916–1999). West wrote, full of praise: “Frank Hodgkinson is a prodigy. He is a man so various that he hardly gives you the time to focus on any single one talent.” In 1999 Hodgkinson was awarded a Membership of the Order of Australia for services to the visual arts. In public, he downplayed the award, but secretly he was very pleased to receive it.
Despite poor health he and Kathleen continued to travel, to New York and St Petersburg, where Hodgkinson was able to view works by one of his favourite and most influential artists, Henri Matisse. Hodgkinson was unable to paint on this journey. But it seems fitting that his last major body of work was based on an Australian subject matter, the Bungle Bungles in Western Australia.
A trip to the World Heritage listed mountain range, located in Purnululu National Park of the Kimberley region, was the artist’s last painting journey in 2000. Hodgkinson surveyed the great expanse and impressive formations of the range in a tiny helicopter. He sketched daily in the field and later completed the series in his studio, up to his death in October 2001.
“Walking and painting in these gorges was tough – for the first time, Frank let me carry his paint case, as we scrambled across dry creek beds, clambered stony ravines so deep and narrow as to be able to touch both sides of the chasms with outstretched arms. We shared the sense that this was it – as indeed it proved to be – his last painting journey.” Kate Hodgkinson
The complete series was exhibited posthumously at Wagner Galleries in Sydney in 2006 entitled Frank Hodgkinson – Soaring the Bungles. “Though earthbound experiences in the gorges and creek beds of the Bungle Bungles fired studies of unique texture, form and colour it was flying over them that sparked the sense of levitation in these paintings,” Hodgkinson commented.
“Particularly in the tiniest of helicopters without restricting doors, I felt as free as a bird to hover, soar, touch down on smooth domes and pot-holed beehives of sandstone and to perch on the fans of Livistona palms.72 An exhilarating sensation opening a vision, direct and abrupt. It crystallised a lifetime of dreams in colour of levitation, surreal yet so real – abstraction counterfeiting realism.”73
On 20 October 2001, Frank Hodgkinson passed away peacefully in his home surrounded by his family. In his lifetime Hodgkinson had produced a prodigious amount of work and shown an incredible depth of personal involvement. To the end, totality had become the source of his inspiration, not just the changing landscapes. “I am attempting through my work to establish from my own point of view a relationship with this country and the world at large,” he explained.74
An outstanding observer, he was an artist with a remarkable ability to look beyond the visible and an unmatched capacity to visualise artistically what he saw. “Art,” he mused, “is an act of divination by entrails, not a careful record of the obviously seen … I find it necessary to sleepwalk a little”.75
Saturnalia and Pacado (Bungle Bungles) 2001 Oil on Canvas 92 x 213cm
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