Smart (July)

Margaret Olley was a house. Oversized hats and calico cats. Turpentine tins and raffia bins. Cootamundra vases and six-pane glasses. Garden vista greens, golden Chinese screens. Wooden drawers and carpeted floors. Paint tube tops and teapot slops. Art book towers and arching flowers. Crimson textures and statue extras. Jeffrey Smart had nous. None of that colour and movement, no utter clutter and home improvement. None of that fauvism, arts-and-crafts chauvinism. No adornment. His pencil outlines a wistful face. Simplicity of no thing, a place where there’s nothing we need to prove. Seventy-one. July sometime. Margaret Olley, out for the day.