Our Events Manager Chris Gordon interviews Betty Churcher about Australian Notebooks.

Congratulations on your second book.

I’m so glad you enjoyed my meander through the Australian Galleries.

Your tour of these galleries is both enlightening and heart-warming; I enjoyed being in the arms of what I felt was an art-lover, artist and historian all at once. How would you describe your position in relation to these books?

You were in the arms of an art-lover every step of the way — but the artist is never far behind. I think my time as a practising artist all those years ago still informs my vision, but the historian is as ever curious about the painting’s history — what is its history? How did it come to be in one of our State Galleries?

I love that you talk about drawing as a means ‘seeing’. Would you see it as a form of empathy for the artist?

Drawing helps me to see because it slows me down. In this hasty world that we now live in, anything that slows us down can only be a good thing. It was interesting to discover which paintings I simply could not draw — for example John Olsen’s ‘Spanish Encounter’. I told this to John and he said, “I don’t think I could draw it either!” So we were quits!

You have crossed the world and ages several times in your tour of the galleries — from work to work, and I like the meandering style of it all. Is that really how you ‘take in’ a gallery?

You’re right, it was a meander through the galleries — from Fifteenth century wax reliefs to Contemporary Australian — mostly I noticed afterwards that it was paintings (I was a painter) but in the introduction I refer only to sculptures — no rhyme or reason. I simply followed my nose — I decided not to structure my meander in any way.

And now an intimate question… What work do you have hanging in your hall way?

What do I have hanging in my hallway? Lots:

• A beautiful watercolour by Joy Hester.
• An Indian miniature (erotic).
• A Charles Blackman gouache where he’s painted a winsome girl over a Time magazine cover featuring Lord Home.
• A Japanese woodblock.
• A John Olsen colour etching ‘Beckett Passing By’ 1992.
• My husband’s gouache of our four boys: Ben the eldest (about eight years old) holding the baby Tim, then Paul and lastly Peter (without his nappy, which was typical).
• A drawing by Australian artist Mike Brown.
• A suite of drawings by Jon Molvig.

Come along and meet Betty herself at our Hawthorn shop on April 10th. This is an extraordinary opportunity to hear Betty talk about her most loved art, her life and why the two are intertwined, and get your copy of Australian Notebooks signed! Read more here.