today

To pass the time as I am doing the-most-boring-job-I-have-ever-done-for-money-ever, I have been listening to pod-casts. It's hard to say exactly what I hear, and what I take in. I think about it as something like the type of attention that psychoanalysts pay you as you monologue your experience: what is of interest or use or relevance stands out from the static and drone.

This is from a documentary podcast by ABC Radio National on the life of Melbourne-born cosmopolitan painter Lina Bryans, The Pink House.

Art Historian 1: She's been described as a relational figure, relating to people and bringing people together, but not being a high profile person. She managed to...I would say, bring a sense of wholeness to the scene.

Narrator: Lina Bryans met the Czech architect Alex Jelinek in the mid-1950's and he was her companion until her death in the year 2000. Her portraits can be found in the collections of all the major Australian art galleries, confirmation of the importance of painting to the national archive, and, of course, the importance of painters to life.

Art Historian 2: The effort she put into living and into relating...you know, the way she conducted friendships and relationships in general—it doesn't fit within idea perhaps of male orientated or male created ideas of careerism or posterity; but that comes into her art—this same ability to put people together and to see what's important in the world is the thing that she brings to a subject that she's painting. It's a very rare achievement.

Art Historian 3: What I like about her is that she's an example of someone who didn't run with a certain way of doing things. She's a relatively minor figure in some ways. She's done some superb paintings. What more can you ask of an artist than to do that?

[archival recording]Lina Bryans: I mean you only go on doing it because you've made it your life and it gives you something.

Interviewer: Has it given you a good life?

Lina Bryans: Yes.

Labels: field research