Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

abstractions are throwing the baby out with the bathwater ... You lose touch ... with nature, with natural forms ... I don't think that's art, because the human part has been left out'.30He also identified with Fairweather's view that he did not want 'to paint as though through the lens of a camera': What I wanted to express was the effect that the scene had on me. Ibegan to see from then on everything not only as a whole, but fragmented, moving, regrouping, the outlines fluid and changing as they settled into the picture that conveyed my thoughts .31 While it is not possible in the scope of this essay to enter into the complexities of the abstract-figurative debates that were occurring in the late 1950s and early 1960s,32it is clear from both Journey into the You Beaut Country no.2 and Sea flux that Olsen's works reveal the fluid boundaries between abstraction and figuration. The works of his Sydney counterparts at the time, Stan Rapotec and Peter Upward, were perhaps closest to the broad definition of Abstract Expressionism in the 1960s. Olsen shared their regard for Zen philosophy, automatism and an emotive response to process. However, his interest in irrational, figurative imagery, larrikin humour and passionate attachment to place brought him closer in spirit to Sidney Nolan's work of the 1940s. As Olsen himself said: It is a kind of larrikinism against authority and it is found in Ned Kelly's last words, 'Here's luck'. It's very Australian and it comes from the Irish. If it's picked up it can be found in the You Beaut Country' series .33 Journey into theYou Beaut Country no.2 and Sea flux sum up several interwoven strands in Olsen's art. They are about a geography of mind and imagination; a cornucopia of place informed by the mysterious and the irrational, alive with incident and imagery. The worlds they depict are related to nature, memory, experience and the psychic drive in the act of creation. As in many of Olsen's works of this period and beyond, they are infused with a fluid, dynamic energy —with a sure sense of the life force. Deborah Hart is an art historian, author and curator. John Olsen Sea flux 1963 Charcoal, wash, pastel and gouache on off- w hite wove paper 55.6x76.2cm Gift of Dr Norman Behan, cmg 1979 Queensland Art Gallery John Olsen People who live in the You Beaut Country 1962 Oil on board 152.4x121.9cm Private collection Photograph by Robert Walker 'COME WITH ME ON THIS JOURNEY' 285