In contrast to the 10 x 10 cm studies I’ve been developing lately, here is a considerably larger scale painting I’d all but forgotten about: The Return of St Joan, 1994, oil on canvas, 137 x 51 cm. (Private collection).
At the time of making this work, I was living in St Kilda, my hometown; however, an Australia Council residency in Paris in 1993 had left its mark. During the residency, I’d become fascinated by female saints in Medieval and early Renaissance art. On an early morning walk to St Kilda Beach, I noticed the distant turrets of Luna Park shrouded in mist, looking for all the world like a castle in a Medieval landscape. By the time I got home, the seeds of this painting had been sown.
The Return of St Joan was one of three of my works that were included in the 1998 exhibition Luna Park and the Art of Mass Delirium at Heide Museum of Modern Art (the others were an oil pastel drawing, St. Kilda Warrior, 1996 and a linocut, Luna Park Face, 1996). The exhibition ran from 8 December, 1998 - 21 March, 1999.