Lucy Culliton and Elisabeth Cummings, both widely loved Australian contemporary artists, have been friends for more than 40 years. They have appeared in public together and they have headed out to paint together in the open air. For those familiar with the artists’ contrasting approaches to mark-making, it’s exciting to think of the differences between works arising from views they started out sharing, a stone’s throw apart.
Personally, there are many points of commonality between the artists. Each studied (and later taught) at the National Art School, Sydney. As young women both spent influential periods abroad, Elisabeth in Italy and Lucy in London. Each revels in colour; critics remark on the joyous character of works by both. Many collectors have been fortunate to have acquired works by both. Recently the two of them featured on a list of Australia’s most collectable artists.
It is surprising, then, that this is the first time that they have exhibited work together.
The titles of the works in On paper together attest to the two artists’ quest for new places to paint and draw. Each has constantly sought inspiration from new colours, textures, density of landscapes and qualities of light, between them visiting places including India, Türkiye, the Australian outback and the wild parts of the USA.
The addictive angles, tangles, blocks and curves in these works of Elisabeth’s reflect the way she experienced landscapes from Ross River, east of Mparntwe/Alice Springs, south to Arkaroola and Lake Mungo in South Australia. They take the viewer on an imaginative, visually responsive journey from the great Keytah cotton farm and Mehi River in the vicinity of Moree, northern New South Wales, to the intriguing Dangar Island on the Hawkesbury River, just a couple of hours from Sydney, to Kelton Plains in Monaro country, between the sea and the snow. A couple of works made in Tāhuna/Queenstown on Te Waipounamu/ South Island of New Zealand, Queenstown Kitchen and South Island reflect Elisabeth’s frequent alteration between representations of interior and outdoor views – all imbued with her free, intelligent rumination on what she has seen and her eternal search for balance of forms and spaces.
It is a great pleasure to see vivid gouaches Lucy made in lutruwita/Tasmania in this exhibition along with the kind of works on which she has built a considerable share of her major reputation: representation of rooms, garments, furnishings and pets in her home at Bibbenluke on the Monaro, and the garden and broader landscape around it. Anyone considering the two artists’ pictures would identify Elisabeth as the abstractionist. Yet Lucy will often ‘abstract’ an insignificant, inelegant element from her surroundings – a lamp base, a vase with feet and applied floral decoration, a knitted object, a shirt – and proceed to render it uncannily devoid of context. Across her oeuvre, the subjects she has chosen speak of her warm, wry and funny character. [Landscape shirt] is a recent example.
– Dr Sarah Engledow, Senior Research Curator, Museum of Brisbane, 2025
Monotypes by Elisabeth Cummings printed by Cicada Press
Lithographs by Lucy Culliton printed by Lancaster Printing
