As Eugenio Montale wrote in his essay The Second Life of Art, as soon as an artwork leaves an artist’s studio it has a second life. It ceases to belong to the person who created it and becomes instead the property of everyone who looks at it. Consequently, it is open to the opinion and, interpretation of art critics, writers, curators, cataloguers, and members of the public, most of whom have no hesitation in expressing their thoughts.
Occasionally their observations are puzzling to the artist, revealing more about the viewer than the artist’s intentions. Critics may discover fanciful influences or ideas which were never in the artist’s mind. Nonetheless exhibitions, public and private purchases are all essential in bringing an artist’s work to public attention. Without them an artist may remain hidden, irrespective of the quality of their art. During nearly seventy years of exhibiting, Ann Thomson’s oeuvre has attracted a great deal of commentary, most of it positive and insightful.
The first published comment on Ann’s artwork came from Melville Hayson who admired her drawing of a cat at Finney’s Art Gallery, Brisbane, in October 1954, writing: “Ann Thomson’s cat has quality.” The following year her work in the fourth exhibition of Queensland Artists of Fame and Promise, attracted the attention of the Courier Mail art critic Dr Gertrude Langer. Dr Langer prophetically observed: “Ann Thomson has fun in painting and might develop with further study” – brief but encouraging praise for a twenty one year-old who already knew that art was her destiny.
Ann had been attending part-time art classes in her hometown of Brisbane, under the tutelage of the artists Melville Hayson, Richard Rodier-Rivon and John Molvig. In one of their classes, when asked to draw the kangaroo on the penny coin, she realised that the Brisbane Tech was not for her and made the decision to pursue her studies in Sydney.
She supported herself in Sydney by working as a colour consultant by day and studying art part-time at night at the East Sydney Technical College (now the National Art School). Her hard work, determination and strength of character resulted in her being awarded a five-year mature age scholarship in 1957.
As well as being tutored by Desiderius Orban, John Passmore, Lyndon Dadswell and, in her final two years, John Olsen, she also profited from extensive discussions with the artist Tony Tuckson. Through these intellectual exchanges she gradually became more aware of nonfigurative art, which would become her metier.
In 1962 her work caught the attention of gallerists and she was included in six group exhibitions held in Sydney, Newcastle and Adelaide. Her painting in the exhibition at Newcastle’s Von Bertouch Gallery was singled out by an anonymous reviewer who pronounced: “Ann Thomson, a newcomer, comes up with the best painting entitled Three Men and is outstanding in the large show. It is an imaginative work.”
Notably, Ann was one of few women included in these group shows. It has long been difficult for women to succeed in the art world. Ann was one of the few women art graduates of the 1950s who was able to sustain a career as a practicing artist. As Joan Kerr wrote in the introduction to Heritage, The National Women’s Art Book, “The assertion that women were incapable of producing art of lasting significance has long justified their omission in any but token form.” There were also few arts-related jobs available for women to supplement their income and to support their practice. This including teaching art, which at the time was generally the preserve of men.
Ann’s talent and perseverance helped her overcame this barrier, and in 1965 Frank Watters held her first solo exhibition. Wallace Thornton reviewed the exhibition for The Sydney Morning Herald, both praising and criticising the work, noting that it “reveals the quality of her sensitivity in painting … [which] shows a decided talent.” He liked her “nervous searching calligraphy, planes, and colour with varied themes of her immediate environment,” subjects Ann would return to regularly. His criticism was that “the transitions obscure too often the major direction.” Attracting generally positive notice for her first solo exhibition made this a promising beginning to Ann’s career. It should have led to further exhibitions, however, the ties of domesticity, a stumbling block for many women artists, meant that it would be eight years before she was able to have a second exhibition.
Ann had married in 1962 and in the succeeding years had two daughters. Looking after her small children and running a household did not prevent her painting, but it did delay her focusing on exhibiting. During those years she worked in her studio after the children had gone to bed and rose to resume her household duties. She also taught two days a week at SCEGGS, a private girl’s school in Darlinghurst. During the school holidays she was able to use the school’s studio, giving her the space to assemble work for her next exhibition.
In 1973, after her marriage ended, she returned to Brisbane where she remained with her children until 1977, painting and teaching art at the Seven Hills College of Art. Upon her return she held her second solo exhibition at Gallery One Eleven. A year later this was followed by a solo exhibition at Gallery A in Sydney, which was greeted with great enthusiasm by the art critics Sandra McGrath (The Australian), James Gleeson (The Sun) and W.E. Pigeon (Daily Telegraph).
McGrath wrote: “Ann Thomson combines knowledgeable sophisticated abstract works with an inventive personal fantasy that involves flight and flying. Brightly coloured child-like airplanes, parachutes and balloons spin crazily and drop out of the sky … with colours that suggested land, sea and air.” McGrath’s review concluded: “The paintings are descriptively difficult to pin down … though the exhibition has such a unique personal flavour that one can hardly wait for the next time around.” Gleeson found it “difficult to pin-point the quality that makes Ann Thomson’s painting so charming and effective. Perhaps it is the sheer exuberance of the paint.” He saw a bright future ahead and ended his review: “Whatever it is, it has to do with lightness of touch that masks a serious concern with picture making.” Pigeon admired “the fervour of Ann Thomson” and her “expression for its own sake, often without form but always with exuberance that comes with complete immersion in a theme.” Like the brightly coloured airplanes in her paintings, Ann Thomson’s work was now flying high, and critics continued to praise her art.
In 1976 she won Brisbane’s David Jones Prize with her painting Maloolaba, an abstract interpretation of the subject. The judge, Raoul Mellish, Director of the Queensland Art Gallery (1974-1986), explained to a bemused Courier Mail reporter that “it was not a direct rending of a particular aspect of Maloolaba, but more a universal feeling for the Queensland coastline.”
If the painting puzzled the reporter, it caught the attention of the University of Queensland Union, which commissioned Ann to paint a mural for the University’s Malley Refectory. The mural was unveiled in 1977 to much acclaim. Writing in The Australian, art critic Pamela Bell described the “fantastic images of flight with gauzy pterodactyl wings, balloons and box like shapes …which float across a huge expanse of sky.” She was impressed by “an increasing sureness and unity in Ann Thomson’s work. It may prove a significant ingredient in her development as an artist.”
In the same year the Dean of St John’s Cathedral in Brisbane, Ian George, was very much taken with Ann’s entry in the 1977 Gold Coast City Art Prize and was quoted in The Gold Coast Bulletin, pronouncing: “It is the insecure person who suspects that abstract art is some kind of world-wide trick.” He lamented that “there was not enough money in the Art Prize kitty” to buy Ann’s painting The Wind Machine, because “Ann Thomson is one of our most promising artists who is fascinated by old machines. She is also a good pusher of paint. In this picture one can see how she creates illusions by the thickness and thinness of the paint.”
While the Dean was full of praise for Ann’s work, so again was Dr Langer when she visited Brisbane’s Institute of Modern Art later in the same year. She enjoyed Ann’s “concern with space and movement, expressed through air, or sea and air and fragmented images of flying machines which press against and ruffle the air,” adding that “she also takes a sensuous delight in acrylics.”
Despite the hard work of completing her mural, while also teaching art and looking after two young children, Ann’s work was flourishing. The following year, she was awarded a Visual Arts Board grant for a residency at the Cité International des Arts in Paris, the first of many sojourns in that city. When she returned from France she settled in Sydney where she still lives and works to this day.
Ann’s 1977 solo exhibition at Gallery A was again greeted with much acclaim by McGrath: “The work of Ann Thomson represents some of the best painting being done today,” she observed. “The paintings with their fractured shapes seem to imply some edgy experience.” McGrath concluded that “Thomson’s paintings do not fall under either an abstract or figurative label, but they are felt in terms of Abstract Expressionism in which the canvas is seen as an arena of the psyche. … Such works often depend upon emotional depth and depth of the artistry. Thomson is endowed with both.”
This was high praise from the critic of The Australian, but not everyone was so convinced. Nancy Borlase writing in The Sydney Morning Herald found the paintings to be “hit-and-miss works, form and content have a way of pulling in opposite directions … their redeeming feature is a freshness of colour.”
McGrath continued to praise Ann’s work. Reviewing her 1979 exhibition at Gallery A, she observed: “She has not departed in theme from previous exhibitions, but the treatment is very different. … the results are large and handsome with a much more sophisticated use of space.” She also commented on her “beautifully sensitive and sensuous use of colour… [she] is becoming one of Australia’s most significant artists.” Writing about a subsequent exhibition at Gallery A in 1982, she observed, “Ms Thomson’s painting have a tough masculine quality which is rare in paintings by men or women.” Describing her as a “brilliantly talented artist,” McGrath remembered: “A few years ago, a colleague reminded me, I wrote a New Year’s Art List in which I stated that if I were giving out prizes, I would have made Ann Thomson a Dame.” The exhibition at Gallery A convinced her that “I was absolutely right.”
Susanna Short’s critique in The Sydney Morning Herald also praised the strength of Ann’s work in her 1984 exhibition at the Coventry Gallery. She wrote that “Recent attempts to redress the historical balance for women artists have done little to dispute the myth that art made by women is slight and essentially decorative. It takes an exhibition such as Ann Thomson’s at Coventry Gallery to show that women can produce tough works which speak to us in positive terms and employ a purely abstract language.”
Short also reviewed a concurrent exhibition of Ann’s water colours at Stadia Graphics. She recalled that in a 1982 exhibition Ann had shown several constructions in which she “explored the idea of using twigs and strings as a trigger to the imagination,” noting: “This time she is showing another group of exploratory three-dimensional works.” This is the first written mention of Ann’s forays into sculpture which, with her works on paper and collages, have played a significant part in her oeuvre.
Reviewing the Stadia Graphics exhibition in The Australian, Elwyn Lynn particularly admired Ann’s “beautifully poised small linear excursions through gentle vales of water colour that washes over freckles of crayon … In each small work that glows like illuminated manuscripts she unostentatiously displays a virtuoso repertoire of relevant devices. Lines can fall like black rain, become lost in mazes.” He singled out for special praise a collage featuring feathers and a ladder which, “enhance the theme of the fragile and transient.”
While Ann’s exhibitions continued to receive praise, she also began to attract larger feature articles in newspapers and magazines. Writing about her 1986 exhibition at Coventry Gallery, Lenore Nicklin titled her article in The Bulletin “Suddenly everyone wants a Thomson” and quoted the gallerist Chandler Coventry: “She is fulfilling the promise she has always shown – she has a remarkable talent which is now being recognised.” In her long article in a 1988 Vogue Living, Betsy Brennan wrote: “Ann Thomson is not an artist to play safe. Her works are strong and strange. Rich in ambiguity and the rhythms of a particular place.” While the artist and critic Susanna Stewart wrote in Australian Artist: “Ann Thomson’s work is energy manifested. Her images seem to dance, weave and reel into existence.”
In 1987 Ann was awarded a residency at the Arthur Boyd Studio in Italy and on her return held an exhibition of paintings, small sculptures and an installation at Michael Milburn Galleries in Brisbane. In the Financial Review, art critic Leone Standford enjoyed the installation, describing it as “an interplay of objects suspended in flight … rotating endlessly in apparently random activity.” Ann’s use of various media was frequently shown together in a single exhibition, and occasionally at more than one gallery.
While most reviews were full of praise for Ann’s work, not all this praise was unqualified. Reviewing the exhibition Surface for Reflexion at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, John McDonald wrote that “Ann Thomson’s two paintings … give the impression that she had put considerable labour and thought into her work, continually trying out one options while discarding another. It is not even necessary to like Thomson’s complicated scumbling or the occasional murkiness of her colour choices. She still commands our respect through her determination to avoid the easy and tasteful paths.” Nonetheless, Ann’s reputation was reinforced by several awards including the 1986 John McCaughey Award by the Art Gallery of New South Wales, for the best painting purchased by the Gallery in the previous year.
In 1991, nine years after Ann first exhibited her sculptures, her exploration and fascination with three-dimensional works was given full recognition on a grand scale. The Australian Federal Government commissioned her to create a work for the 1992 Australian Pavilion at Expo Seville, Spain. The result was the 11-metre-high Australia Felix. The sculpture attracted a great deal of public attention, including an article in the Review Weekly by Pamela Williams who described Ann variously as, “a sculptor” as well as, “one of Australia’s powerful artists.”
In 1992 she had simultaneous exhibitions showing works on paper at the Australian Gallery and sculpture at Mary Place. Reviewing both, Bronwyn Watson in the Weekend Australian described Ann as “an artist who had never been content to settle into an easy stylistic mode and has always put considerable thought and labour into the exploration of new directions.” While Lynn wrote in The Australian that he enjoyed the sculptures’ “lively invasion of space.”
Asked by The Bulletin in 1993 to choose his ‘Bunch of Ten’ favourite artists, Edmund Capon, Director of the Art Gallery of NSW (1979-2011) named Ann as one of his choices, writing: “I genuinely think she is one of the most interesting and intuitive artists in Australia today … there’s a wonderful sense of exploration about her work.” He saw Ann’s work as, “complex, dense often bewildering, but always beguiling and intriguing,” with “an authentic urgency to create.”
In 1998 Ann won the Wynne Prize, with her painting Yellow Sound. Attempting to be witty, Giles Auty reported in The Australian that when the winner was announced, “a great wall of noise certainly did go up, but whether this represented assent, disapproval or despair was hard to gauge.”
Ann had become a “National” artist with exhibitions in Melbourne, Adelaide, and Brisbane, and was gaining international recognition. Writing about her exhibition in Paris, Véronique de Ratuld commentated in Australie No 3: “Ann Thomson’s painting is rich, evolving according to the inspiration of the materials, always intriguing, and always … faithful to herself” [trans]. In addition to Paris, her work was exhibited in America, Belgium, China, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Mary Ann Beaumont singled out Ann’s painting for special praise in the Contemporary Australian Art group show held in London in 1985. She wrote in the Arts Review: “Her work could stand out in the company of any European or American Abstract Expressionists … Executed in brilliant colours and vigorous line, she is a force to be reckoned with.”
Appreciation of her work continued throughout the next two decades. In his foreword to Anna Johnson’s monograph Ann Thomson (2010), David Malouf said her work “offers us…. the energetic act of creation itself, as it emerges from the artists consciousness and impinges on the sheet, or canvas, as brushstrokes, layers of paint, the illusionary play between two-dimensional space and three-dimensional apprehension, the immediate revisioning of accident as necessary choice.”
In 2016 The National Art School, celebrating her as a treasured alumna, held the exhibition Ann Thomson and Contemporaries, declaring: “This exhibition confirms without doubt the stature of Ann Thomson within the canons of Australian abstract art as teacher, mentor and leader.” The curator of the exhibition, Judith Blackall, commented: “Thomson’s paintings are both compelling and enigmatic. Her brushwork appears simultaneously confident and intuitive, her expressive application of paint and use of colour enlist deeply held responses in the viewer. Her works invite repeated viewing – their energy and light perpetually shift, revealing striking variations that excite and surprise.”
Reviewing Ann’s 2020 exhibition at Mitchell Fine Art, in Brisbane, Phil Brown was delighted to claim her as “a Brissie” and concluded that, “Ann is considered by many to be one of our greatest abstract expressionists.”
Ann’s urgency to create interesting and intuitive artwork, in all its forms, continues to this day. The “second life” of her art as observed and admired in the eyes of others, especially art critics, confirms her place as one of Australia’s leading artists.
