'A conspicuous eloquence': drawings capture subjects in their element

Drawing is a mainstay of visual arts practice and has been so for centuries. For many artists, it is a basic and instinctive activity, an activity that, while it informs all areas of their practice, also has a life of its own and exists as an autonomous aesthetic entity alongside the myriad of practices that constitute contemporary visual arts.

For Sue Taylor, drawing embraces the preceding and more. It is her means of transcribing her world and her experience of that world in a language that is at once personal and private yet expressive and open.

Taylor is well-known for her portraits. Her work has been hung in such prestigious exhibitions as the Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of NSW and the Portia Geach Memorial Prize at the S.H. Ervin Gallery. Her ability to elide external appearance with inner psychological states gives her portraits an incisive edge that raises them above the pedestrian.

In the current exhibition, three large portraits dominate the gallery space. These – Old age is not for sissies (Cat. 1), The soup kitchen lady (Cat.2) and Amber beads (Cat.3) – are sizeable compared with most of the other works in the exhibition, the majority of which are sketchbook size.

Their physical domination is matched with a pictorial “finish”, the sort of appearance required of a “finished” portrait that is not found in other works but is also not necessary for them. The portraits however still retain a degree of freshness and immediacy related to Taylor’s concentration on the sitter’s face. Other elements are lightly delineated; present but in a quietly unobtrusive way. Viewers are not distracted by background interference or any other appurtenances whose presence would distract from the relationship between sitter and subject that discloses (again quietly) the inner person who is the sitter.

The soup kitchen lady is a beautiful exercise in the transposition of the inner to the outer. The sitter’s searching eyes have a piercing interrogative look redolent of an understanding and experience of life. The sitter’s face is frontal, confronting and compassionate yet the eyes speak of the inner person and a life long lived.

The exhibition is scattered with a number of (mostly) unnamed “portraits” that adopt a freer graphic style than the three above. Hippie Peter (Cat. 20) exemplifies these. It is composed of a scattered mass of lines that imbues a joyous sense of immediacy that does not deny the person depicted. The almost frenzied lines literally scratch the surface of the paper and in a sense the character of the sitter.

The majority of the works in the exhibition speak of the artist’s compulsion to record the actualities of daily life, the events or people that activate the places/spaces we live in, visit or travel through.

The images of people in transit, reading, paddling, doing crosswords or whatever, constitute a charming pictorial diary, a visual record and a compendium of memories that hold personal meaning and still deliver universal comments on the way we live our lives.

I was particularly taken by Doing the crossword (Cat. 16), Holy man at Varanasi, India (Cat. 17), Eating an apple by the pool (Cat. 18), Cranky old gay Irish man (Cat.27) and Posh man at dinner (Cat.28). These (and others) are delightful in the vitality of the drawing and the capturing of particular moments when the protagonists are simply being themselves. The predominance of dorsal views may remove individual personalities but it establishes the artist’s attraction for the “types” encountered on her travels.

Taylor holds an obvious fascination with the animal and avian inhabitants of the places she visits. Her passion for these and the inspiration they hold for her are amply demonstrated in a number of works scattered throughout the exhibition and particularly in the sketchbooks on display in the smaller gallery.

The sketchbooks should not be missed and offer intimate insight into the artist’s practice. Among the birds Taylor enjoys drawing, chooks seem to occupy a special position. Chickens at Windy Hill (Cat. 10) is a beautiful study in charcoal. Individual birds are presented in outline but remain not so much sketches as intimations of the whole. The natural informality of the chooks is captured and delivered in a graphically free and spontaneous manner, revelatory of Taylor’s reactions to her subjects.

In the small gallery, a folio of drawings – One minute drawings - is worth noting for the way it demonstrates the artist’s facility with the drawing medium and the conspicuous eloquence of her eye in the way it captures the nuances of the human form. This is a very full exhibition and an appropriate celebration of a rich and fecund career. Taylor’s graphic skill is beautifully evinced. Her concomitant passion for her chosen medium is also clearly captured.