Kookaburra

Details

Artist

Ethleen Palmer

Title

Kookaburra

Year

1934

Medium

coloured linocut on paper

Size

21 x 23 cm

Details

signed lower right: Ethleen Palmer

inscribed lower left: Linocut 1934

inscribed lower centre: Kookaburra

inscribed lower left: 603

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Further Information

Ethleen Palmer was a well known printmaker in Australia in the 1930s after arriving in Sydney in 1921 from South Africa, France and England, becoming known as the ‘Australian Hokusai’ (Art and Australia, 15 August 1939) and described as ‘Australia’s leading Linocut artist’ in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1938. This was a rich time for printmaking, especially for women and coinciding with emerging modernist design concerns, with significant artists including Margaret Preston, Thea Proctor and Dorrit Black in Sydney and Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers in Melbourne, students of influential English artist Claude Flight. Grosvenor Galleries in Sydney exhibited the animal prints of Norbetine von Bresslern-Roth from 1926.

Turning to relief printmaking in the 1930s following an extended period of illness she was particularly drawn to the long established traditions of China and Japan, which is evident in her compositions and level of detail. The complexity and skill of her printing technique, the use of layered colour and subtle gradation of tone and her ability to capture a sense of movement are all striking. Unlike many linocut artists, Palmer did not use black ink to print once and then hand-colour the image, instead carefully reusing the same linocut several times over with different colours each time, a painstaking method requiring time, accuracy and great care. Palmer held her first solo exhibition of prints in 1936 and by 1939 she was represented in all major state galleries.