Teeming with Life The Wongaloo Project

Arguably this quest began in childhood. Griffith’s first word was ‘Look!’, a command learned from her artistic mother, herself the daughter of an artist. ‘The need to make a mark, to draw or paint in order to make sense of my world, is fundamental to my happiness’, Griffith says. It was the language of her family. Both children went on to become professional artists and, although they have taken very different routes, they share the same dedication to their work. Griffith paints her world to help people really see the beauty and wonder that surrounds them, from the intimate to the majestic.

Since graduating from art school in 1964, Griffith’s output has been astonishing, and remarkably sustained given that she has raised two children, travelled widely and suffered two major health battles. She has had numerous solo exhibitions since 1978 as well as many group shows and commissions. Her oeuvre is broad: from painting, drawing and etching to design for fabrics, murals and tissue and toy packaging. She is perhaps best known for the technical brilliance of her prints. She also paints landscapes, still life, portraits and, increasingly, flora- and fauna-scapes with an environmental theme. These last are the theme of the current exhibition of paintings—oils, acrylics and watercolours—executed both en plein air and in the studio.

From the majestic Jabiru pair, Brolgas courting and Magpie Geese - Evening flight to the intimate Spotted Bowerbird at his carefully decorated courtship arena, the delicate watercolours. They speak of the cycles of life of the wetlands and its inhabitants. Waterbirds are shown in various stage of reproduction, from courtship, to eggs and raising chicks. There are little dramas: herons stake out likely fishing spots, a crocodile lurks among the turtles and a snake slithers perilously close to the eggs of a jacana. The menace of feral pigs is hinted at in Mt Elliot Range and the menace of weeds (and hint that a landscape can still be commercially productive when managed for its ecological qualities) in the two paintings of grazing cattle.

There are strong compositions, such as Glossy Ibis, Darter Pair and Plumed Whistling Ducks and evidence of Griffith as a designer Jabiru nest and Mallard and Boyd’s Forest Dragon. There is a Monet-like Jacanas nesting and nods to Griffith’s ornithological antecedents: the Neville Caley-like Evening alert and Willy Wagtail and Kingfishers. There is even humour, in Fortress Townsville and Gathering inspiration. Everywhere there is plenty, from the lush wetlands and surrounds to the bounty of the waters and the fruits feasted on by the pigeons.

And there is plenty in the number, variety and generosity of the works. The spirit of the Indigenous people who, for thousands of years, hunted and foraged in the wetlands also captured Griffith’s imagination. She heard the story of James Morrill, a survivor to of the wreck of the Peruvian, a trading barque that left Sydney in 1846, bound for China. After the ship ran aground on a shoal in the Coral Sea, Morrill was among the 21 people who set out on a raft. For six weeks they drifted, and only seven wasted souls remained when the makeshift craft washed up near Cape Cleveland. The local Aboriginal band adopted the Captain and his wife and Morrill joined the neighbouring group centred on Mt Elliot and the vast Wongaloo wetlands. Griffith’s painted four scenes representing Morrill’s story until he rejoined European society in 1863, when settlers began arriving in the Burdekin—by then he was the only survivor of the wreck. Griffith depicts Morrill’s adventures as heroic, the stuff of legend.

Griffith’s work is accessible rather than monumental; warm, painterly and emotive rather than textbook illustration; and deceptively straightforward, belying the underlying technicality. Her enthusiasm and delight in her subject shine through. Her work teems with life in every sense of the word. ‘Look!’, it says, ‘Look at nature’s glorious abundance’.

Dr Penelope Olsen