I acknowledge the Traditional Owners on whose land I walk, I work and I live. I pay my respects to Elders past, present and future.

Monday 12 August 2019

John Coburn (1925 – 2006)

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:

https://amp.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/the-crazy-and-epic-story-of-john-coburn-s-opera-house-curtain-call-20190410-p51csz.html
Source: Curtain of the Sun. Art Gallery of New South Wales

Source: Night Scene. Art Gallery of New South Wales


Mosaic celebrating John Coburn - Visitor Information Hub, Tyto, Ingham

SOURCES:
Nadine Amadio, 1988, Coburn – The Seasons Tapestries, Christensen Fund, Perth
Nadine Amadio, 1988, John Coburn Paintings, Craftsman House, Roseville NSW
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