Bernadette Curtin Artwork and Paintings

Candida Baker charts the ebb and flow of artist Bernadette Curtin’s career…

If, as perceptual psychologist Laura Sewell points out, our sensory capacities are the avenue of connection between the self and the world, then it would make sense that artists – of all kinds – are among those whose sensory perception is heightened.

For artist Bernadette Curtin, the developing of a perceptual practice has been an almost devotional ritual – and most specifically when it comes to painting water.

Curtin, who grew up in the foothills of the Flinders ranges, was intrigued by the importance and symbolism of water from an early age.

“I think because water is essential for survival – particularly in such a dry area, I found myself drawn to the myth of water even as a child,” she says. “In some ways all of my painting is about trying to simplify something to its essence and for me one drop of water in a painting can create a whole story.”

As Curtin has matured as a painter, the less is more principle has become the driving force behind her work. The dichotomy of ‘less is more’, is also perhaps the same as ‘simple is complex’. We watch an Olympic figure skater making it seem easy, even though we know that it’s not – so with Curtin’s paintings, the simplicity is layered with an intense process.

Talking in the beautiful studio she has created in her home near Mullumbimby in the Northern Rivers, Curtin shows me her visual arts diaries – works of art in themselves, they are full of, well, almost anything that takes her fancy.

“I have this need to jot things down,” she says. “It’s how the process starts for me. I draw things, cut out things, I write poems, or find bits of writing that speak to me and I collect them all in the books.”

Photographs jostle up against diagrams of possible paintings, with lists of colours and angles. Dreams make their presence felt, as do many writers – and through it all is the artist’s path…where am I going? How will I do it? What is it I’m trying to do?

For Curtin, the theme of water has been her companion through much of a peripatetic artist’s life – in Crystal Brook where she grew up; in Perth, and also Melbourne where she worked as Dean of Visual Art at Ruyton Girls School, as painting tutor in the Open Learning Program in the Department of Art and Culture at RMIT and in her studio in South Yarra; and now in the Northern Rivers.

“It’s been an interesting shift for me coming from Melbourne where I would sit inside in my studio and study the raindrops, to this area where the views are so extensive and the weather is something which affects my daily life,” Curtin says.

Whether it was partly the dislocation of moving, or the giving up of her teaching career in order to concentrate on painting, Curtin’s latest works are showing every sign of an artist in full bloom.

“I feel as if I’ve made some real breakthroughs since we moved here a few years ago,” she says. “I think my work has become less decorative, if you like, and there is more power in it.”

A large part of her life is absorbed in living with water these days: “I walk on the beach every day, and where I walk is where the river meets the beach. When it rains I can see straight out over the valley from my studio – and in this area you are never far from magnificent views with water in, or even just the sense of water in the landscape.”

As the Northern Rivers has begun to make its presence felt in her work, there is a subtlety in both technique and idea in her latest work that has been years in the making.

A recent painting, Departure and Return, shows signs of a shift. After attending a funeral recently, Curtin concentrated on painting a picture that would reflect the despair and grief of those left behind, but also the sense of relief and transformation for the one that has left. It is a haunting painting which draws the viewer back again and again – a true sign of a master painter at work.

And after minestrone soup and conversations about any number of things, as I drive down the poinsettia lined laneway back towards Byron Bay, it seems to me that this is the wonderful thing about being an artist – you get better with age, like a fine wine.

Being in the company of someone who knows so much and yet makes it look so simple is a privilege one does not come across often.

Candida Baker is a writer, photographer and journalist. She has been deputy editor of the Good Weekend, arts editor of the Sydney Morning Herald and editor of the Weekend Australian Magazine. She is the author of three works of fiction, including her latest novel, The Hidden, and she was the creator of Yacker, a series of interviews with Australian writers. She lives in the Byron Bay hinterland.