About the artist
Helen Maudsley b. 1927 Melbourne, Australia.
Helen Maudsley is a senior Australian artist whose work should be far better known than it is. During her seventy-year career, from her first solo exhibition in 1957 to her most recent in 2021, she has pursued and refined her artistic vision. Maudsley’s complex works have their genesis in the physical world around us, but she works with form and composition to write ‘essays’, which are intended to be read. Maudsley’s highly personalised motifs and complex compositions demand that the viewer spends time looking at the image. As she puts it, “we need to watch the associations that arise in our mind while looking and give the combinations of shapes the opportunity to act on our imagination.” The charming ladies was made early in Maudsley’s career and is one of a series of images in which she has abstracted the female form, retaining some figurative elements within its surrealist-inspired approach.
The work is a strong representation of Maudsley’s early practice and an excellent example of Australian abstraction.
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Thank you to these generous donors who have supported the 2022 AGWA Foundation Annual Appeal:
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