This was published 8 years ago
Where the light fades - a dying artist is amazed to find one last idea
By John Elder
The birds in the garden don't know the day is nearly done. They carry on as if it's spring. On the verandah, Brigid Cole-Adams says she'll stay awhile, no matter it's getting cold.
It's a strange evening. Grey clouds, gold light sneaking sideways. The longer you stare across the river-fed country of Kew, the brighter it gets, just like one of her paintings. What a marvellous thing, she says, to have a retrospective exhibition of her life's work.
Artist Brigid Cole-Adams. Land Marks is a retrospective exhibition of her life's work. Credit: Eddie Jim
"Artists don't normally get a retrospective until after they've died," she says.
This could well have been the case. Land Marks, an exhibition of paintings, watercolours and prints 1972-2015 opened last week. By that time Cole-Adams had taken up residence at the Caritas Christi Hospice, uncertain that she'd attend the party. No matter the untroubled lightness in her voice and manner, she tires easily.
Artist Brigid Cole-Adams. Land Marks is a retrospective exhibition of her life's work.Credit: Eddie Jim
"We figured a two-hour slot was what I could manage, and just as I was beginning to think I was getting tired, the taxi arrived to bring me back," she says.
About seven weeks ago, the artist was walking about, living independent no matter the body failing her. She had just returned from a holiday in Broome with her husband. There she had swum in the sea, walked along the beach, and napped heavily in the afternoons. Three days following her return home, she'd begun a trial form of chemotherapy.
"I had a very bad reaction, it was so bad that everyone was gathered around waiting for me to die, and I was too," she says. "After that very strange night it started getting better, I felt a bit of a fraud."
The reaction, however, has probably killed her walking for good. Death began its demands in May last year when she lost a kidney to cancer. Six months went by thinking all was well, and then the liver was invaded.
Brigid Cole-Adams' Road with Bridge (Green), 1974.
By then she was working on five paintings that she considered to be the last of her career, which has seen her work collected at the Australian National Gallery in Canberra, the Sate Library of Victoria and galleries in London and Malaysia. She's probably best known for gorgeous landscapes as seen from above, where the indigenous landscape is invaded in sections by European flora.
The last five paintings were a simplification, a stripping back to colour, of the prevailing theme in which one scene is framed by another. If those five painting could be finished, she reasoned, she would be satisfied.
Squeeze, from Brigid Cole-Adams' Drawing on the Land series.
"I felt I had time to get those done ... it was the simplest painting," she said.
It must be said that this story isn't a biography, and it certainly isn't an early obituary. It's about art and life, how they feed on one another – and how opportunity and inspiration can catch you out.
"I was very surprised to find I had an idea for some new work ... a set of five pictures," she says.
The idea came from a conversation Cole-Adams had with her journalist daughter Kate about Tirra Lirra by the River, the Miles Franklin Award-winning novel by Australian author Jessica Anderson. The words Tirra Lirra are found in Tennyson's poem about the doomed Lady of Shalott, who suffers unrequited love and a final journey floating down the river.
"At the moment all I can do is have an idea and draw up something in pencil," she says. "What I'm going to do here will be to get someone else draw it up for me. I'll keep it very simple."
For Brigid Cole-Adams, it doesn't matter if the pictures are ever done. "You have to be passive in all this," she says. "It's nice seeing what the children are doing, and it's good where I can do a little bit more work, but it's filling in time.
"It cheers me up when I get tired, because what's happening is real. But I'm not dying as quickly as I thought I was. I feel I'd like to do a Lady Shallot and lie down and sail away. It doesn't look like I can."
Land Marks, an exhibition of paintings, watercolours and prints 1972-2015 is on show at the Bridget McDonnell Gallery in Faraday Street Carlton until July 25.