Wieneke Archive Book 3 : Moreton Galleries 1960-61 Presscuttings

EXTUCT from the "elboulme 'Herald' 15/7/59 - ALLAN Ye CTrLLOCH ..To paint something of their own, something typically Australian, is the worthwhile objective of a lot of our contemporary painters. ?laxly have sought the answer in regionalism, meaning the raw country itself and its ori;: nal inhabitants. NOLAN and DRYSDALE are two of the names that come to mind as leaders. The evidence of his current one-man Shoe, the Australian Galleries, Collingwood, places JAMES 7.314EY with them at the top of the list. Tot that his work is more inventive or more painterly than the other, but he has responded to the allure, the tragedy and the mastery of his subject with more sensitivity and human sympathy than either. The whole sad story of our national outcasts is here and it is told with penetrating insight and fine poetic feeling. ?lore than thats however emotionally involved Wigley might be, he has that quality of detachment without which the finest talent collapses. Again he escapes another danger in that the poet in him controls a facility which in lesser hands might well take charr-!. Like all art which aspires to the highest levels, 'vigley's art has its fault. But, whatever dissatisfaction arises from those fugitive apparently unresolved passages in the larger paintings, the thought occurs at the same time that the artist stopped e-actly at the right