This is the second installment by Chris and Vivienne Parry on famous identities born in Ingham. I thank them for their contribution. This blog is on renowned artist John Coburn, born in Ingham, and for whom the tropical north always held a special place in his heart.
John
Coburn was born in Ingham in 1925. His mother Alice Biggs had married Edgar
Cockburn in Halifax in 1922. Edgar was a bank accountant and soon after the
marriage he was transferred to the Darling Downs. Edgar passed away in 1936 and
Alice returned to Halifax to live with her mother Christina Biggs (nee Beatts).
John
attended Halifax Primary School and then went to All Souls School in Charters
Towers as a boarder. Alice and her sister Jess opened a clothing store in
Halifax and this business continued until Alice remarried. She married her
cousin Walter Beatts in 1939. They had two sons, Geoffrey and Barry, who still
live in the district.
Alice
and Walter had a farm at Braemeadows and also a beach hut at Taylor’s Beach
where the family spent weekends and holidays. In her later years Alice was a
resident at Canossa Home at Trebonne where she passed away in 1981. Canossa
Home has a beautiful work donated by John Coburn, the Tree of Life.
John,
known as Jack to friends and family, always said that much of his art was
inspired by his childhood in tropical North Queensland. Later, although he
lived in Sydney, he often went north for holidays, to relatives at Braemeadows,
Taylors Beach, Halifax, Mona, and Mount Cordelia.
He
showed an aptitude for art at an early age, but left school when he was 14 to
work in a bank in Halifax, Ingham and then in Innisfail. Painting and drawing
were hobbies, pursued on weekends and in the evenings. He bought his first set
of oil paints in Townsville. He had been happy to escape from boarding school
but he didn’t enjoy the work at the bank.
His
life changed dramatically with the outbreak of World War II. At the age of 17 he
volunteered for the navy and spent the next three years travelling around the
Indian and Pacific Oceans, working as a radio operator, and drawing in his
spare time. After demobilisation in 1946 he returned to the bank briefly, but
soon resigned, and with the financial help of ex-servicemen’s rehabilitation aid
he set out for Sydney, to study art full time.
He
enrolled at the National Art School at East Sydney Technical College. This was
where he met his future wife Barbara Woodward. She was a fellow artist and
became one of Australia’s foremost silk screen printers. Barbara played an
important role in John’s artistic career. A deeply spiritual man, he was born
an Anglican, but converted to Catholicism before he married Barbara.
After
graduating from art school he joined the ABC as a graphic designer and prepared
titles and designs for television. During these years he also exhibited work in
art competitions and group shows. A touring exhibition of modern French art had
a great impact on his work and his paintings became more and more abstract. He
had his first solo exhibition in 1958. He started teaching at the National Art
School in 1959, and in 1960 he won the prestigious Blake Prize for Religious Art,
for his painting Triptych of the Passion.
He
painted this work while on a visit to his family in the Herbert Valley. He said
that he suddenly decided to do a painting so he bought a sheet of masonite and
house paints from the hardware store in Ingham. He painted it on the veranda of
his parents’ house in Legge’s Road, Braemeadows. He completed it as a triptych
because it was easier to transport back to Sydney. The painting is a powerful ensemble
of religious symbols. It shows the crucifix and the crown of thorns, with
blood-red spatters of paint and the black shadows of barbed wire. His religious
art in later years though was less confronting and brighter. Another religious
symbol which fascinated him, and of which he did many versions, was the Tree of Life.
He
did a series of tapestries on religious themes which are among his most notable
works. The series was titled The
Spiritual Seasons, comprising individual tapestries named Paradise Garden, Tree of Life, Death and
Transfiguration, Resurrection, and finishing with Hozanna.
The
1960s and 1970s were successful years for Coburn. Awards and honours flowed. His
works began to enter public collections, and were regularly chosen to represent
Australia in overseas touring exhibitions. Over these years he forged a
distinctive style of his own, employing flat signs and silhouettes against bright
fields of colour. In the 1960s he also taught at the National Art School and during
this time one of his students was a young Barbara Saxton, now a well-known
Ingham artist.
His
painting style lent itself to tapestry, and he went to France over a period of
years to supervise the weaving of his designs. His major achievements in this
area were Curtain of the Sun and Curtain of the Moon,
commissioned by the Sydney Opera House in 1970. It is a scandal however that
these pieces have been so rarely seen over the past 50 years. Producers of
opera and drama productions at the Opera House said that the curtains were too
dominating and eye-catching and detracted from the performances on stage.
Other
tapestries of Coburn have been on permanent exhibition such as a series of seven
tapestries, The Seven Days of Creation,
which hang in the John F. Kennedy Centre for the Performing Arts in
Washington DC. The series of nine tapestries The Seasons is in the collection of the Art Gallery of NSW. Summer, the first of the series, has a connection
to North Queensland. John said that some of the shapes in the work were inspired by seeing feathers of brolgas
floating from the sky during a visit to the Town Common in Townsville.
In
1972 Coburn was appointed head of the National Art School. He appreciated the
honour of the position, but he was not happy with the amount of administrative
work involved, so he resigned two years later which gave him the opportunity to
paint full-time. In 1980 he was awarded the Order of Australia, and was firmly
established as one of the country's leading artists. In 1991 he was awarded an
honorary doctorate by James Cook University.
In
2006 James Cook University students also honoured him by doing a mosaic inspired
by his tapestry Paradise Garden. The mosaic was placed in
front of the counter of the Tourist Information Centre in Ingham.
The
passing of Barbara Coburn in 1985 came as a crushing blow, but gradually John
established new working habits, and began travelling again. It was a particular
pleasure to him that one of his works, a Tree
of Life, was accepted in La Collezione
d'Arte Religiosa Moderna in the Vatican Museum in Rome, a collection of
religious artworks by the most famous artists of the twentieth century.
John
Coburn’s works are housed in the National Gallery of Australia, every
Australian State Art Gallery, many regional galleries and public buildings, and
important Australian and overseas collections. The exhibition area of the Tyto
Regional Art Gallery is officially named the John Coburn Gallery, and the
Hinchinbrook Shire Council has a small collection of his works. In 2003 the
gallery held an exhibition of Coburn’s work. The exhibition was attended by
many relatives who still live in the Ingham area, and by John’s son Stephen
Coburn who came from Sydney to attend.
People
who met him remember John Coburn as being quietly spoken, courteous and
charming. He was also a reflective thinker, who had strong convictions and
principles by which he lived.
While
so many celebrated Australian painters of the 20th century have been figurative
artists, that is painters of the human form, Coburn was an abstract artist. It
has been said that perhaps his greatest achievement was to have reached large
audiences with a form of abstract painting based on simple clear shapes and
radiant colours. Most of his pictures have a joyous quality, and that may be
why they exert such a broad appeal.
For a recent article about the story of the Opera House curtains designed by John Coburn, and what happened to them in what his son calls a "tragedy", go to this link:
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| Source: Curtain of the Sun. Art Gallery of New South Wales |
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| Source: Night Scene. Art Gallery of New South Wales |
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| Mosaic celebrating John Coburn - Visitor Information Hub, Tyto, Ingham |
SOURCES:
Nadine
Amadio, 1988, Coburn – The Seasons
Tapestries, Christensen Fund, Perth
Lou
Klepac, 2003, John Coburn, The Spirit of
Colour, The Beagle Press, Roseville NSW
Alan
Rozen, 1979, The Art of John Coburn,
Ure Smith, Sydney
