Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

cold feed, steam 1942 (QAG). In this work, Wilson created a still life from a hospital sterilising unit, its shiny steel pipes, round black taps and geometrical reflections placed on a background grid of square yellow tiles. Eric Wilson Study for 'Hot feed, cold feed, steam' C.1942 Pencil on cream wove paper 9.4 X 12.6cm Purchased 1958 Queensland Art Gallery Eric Wilson Hot feed, cold feed, steam 1942 Oil on composition board 50.8x61.6cm Purchased 1958 Mignon Beatrice McKelvey Bequest Queensland Art Gallery In the same year, probably for reasons of economy, Wilson painted the other side of The violin's canvas. By then he had returned to Australia and, as a conscientious objector, had been put to work as a ward attendant at Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.18The resulting work, Stove theme 1942, was so successful that The violin was relegated a secondary status by the artist, a position it retained until cleaned and reframed in 1995. Together these paintings make a unique work of art. In Stove theme, Wilson returned once again to mainstream' Cubism — most notably the work of Gris and Braque — using the fractured geometry and mixed materials of Cubism, rather than the harmonious colours and textures of Purism. The subject matter is treated with subtle irony — the pot-bellied stove hardly epitomising the very latest technology. Triangles jostle against one another with an ever-upward movement so that the stove appears almost to move with the build-up of heat, and to perform a comical dance on one leg. Each form is perfectly in tune, as is the palette of green, cream and black, and is disrupted and rearranged to convey an architectural quality, a wall behind the stove being differentiated texturally with sand. In Stove theme Wilson explored, through unexpected combinations and juxtapositions, the potential (as he was to describe it) of 'shapes, lines, colours, textures and rhythm — a lyricism transposed in terms of the machine's rigid discipline, a plastic symphony'.19Smooth and rough, dark and light, curved and straight, combine in Stove theme to give the impression of a machine chugging away to get through its daily tasks. Two years later Wilson painted a series of representational works based on his earlier drawings of European cities. More conventional in both subject matter and treatment, these works still incorporate some of the elements of abstraction that 156 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965