Lucy CuLLiton's S Big Skie - ABC Commercial

Lucy Culliton’s 

Big Skies 

A STUDY GUIDE by Marguerite O’Hara 

http://www.metromagazine.com.au 

http://www.theeducationshop.com.au

‘Lucy Culliton is simply one of the 

most talented painters in the country 

… astonishing in her consistency and 

powers of invention.’ 

 

– John McDonald, art critic 

Introduction 

When artist Lucy Culliton was eight years 

old, her family lived for a year on John 

Kimber’s farm on the Monaro Plains in 

southern New South Wales. Ever since that time 

the farm has been her favourite place in the world. 

Littered with three generations of farm machinery, 

cars, tyres and piles of rusting metal, the farm 

sits on a high plain looking across to the snowline 

of the Snowy Mountains. Ten years ago, Culliton 

came back to paint the objects on Kimber’s farm. 

1 

The program runs for 

approximately thirty 

minutes. 

Two years ago Culliton’s love of the Monaro region 

led her to find a new house not far from the farm. In 

this remote country location, Culliton has begun to 

paint a major new series of paintings of the Monaro’s 

big skies. It’s a subject that she has wanted 

to paint since her art school days but only now, 

after a decade of sell-out exhibitions, does she 

feel ready to tackle the challenge of painting these 

dramatic treeless plains and ever-changing skies. 

Culliton’s love for, and intimate knowledge of, the 

Monaro has created a situation that has enabled 

her to make her best work yet. 

The first objective of Culliton’s new project is to 

paint her favourite view in the world, looking over 

John’s farm objects across the Monaro Plains to 

the snowline. 

About the film 

Lucy Culliton’s Big Skies is a documentary about 

an Australian painter working on landscape paintings 

of the country where she lives. It follows Culliton 

as she paints the big, drought-tarnished skies, 

and she talks about her art as we see her working 

on the paintings both outdoors and in her studio. 

Culliton is a major Australian artist whose work is 

immensely popular and sought by both galleries 

and private collectors, though her work is not as 

widely known outside NSW, where she lives, works 

and exhibits. These paintings of the Eden-Monaro 

region mark a new stage in her artistic development. 

The film explores her work processes and 

the relationships between her paintings, the farmers 

whose land she paints on, the landscape and 

the environment. Her paintings show the colours 

2 

and scars on the landscape that are the result of 

serious prolonged drought, a drought that Culliton 

is also experiencing on her own property as she 

paints in the exhausting heat. 

The filmmakers 

Lucy Culliton’s Big Skies was produced, directed, 

filmed and edited by Jennifer Crone. This is Crone’s 

first film since leaving her position as commissioning 

editor at SBS television to return to filmmaking. Her 

previous programs include Over the Fence, a series 

about neighbourhood disputes and their resolution, 

Outback Opera and Southern Exposure. Her programs 

have been described as ‘warm social documents, 

full of life and love’. 

The music for the film is by Brendan Gallagher. He 

has played guitar on recordings for artists including 

David Bowie, Jimmy Little and Kylie Minogue and 

has produced many albums. He has composed and 

produced soundtracks for documentaries for ABC 

and SBS television in Australia as well as for short 

films. In this film, his style reflects Culliton’s love of 

country music. 

Culliton’s 

love for, and 

intimate 

knowledge of, 

the Monaro 

has created a 

situation that 

has enabled 

her to make 

her best work 

yet. 

1: Lucy’s painting 

Autumn, Bibbenluke 

Lodge, 2009 

2: Lucy in her garden 

SCREEN EDUCATION 

2

to the areas they paint, while others, like Lucy Culliton, 

are totally immersed in the landscape, living 

in a place as they visually represent the changing 

views and seasons. This strong sense of place and 

belonging is one of the most arresting and important 

aspects of Lucy Culliton’s work. 

A sense of place 

Bibbenluke, where Culliton lives, is a small town of 

about a dozen houses, a community hall, a school 

and no pub. The area was settled in the 1830s for 

cattle grazing and later sheep farming. It is five 

hours from either Sydney or Melbourne. Bibbenluke 

Lodge, where Lucy Culliton lives and works, is 

in a valley next to the Bombala River. 

Landscape painting in Australia 

There is a long tradition of landscape painting in 

Australia, from Aboriginal artists’ complex and abstract 

paintings of the country through to the work 

of early colonial artists like Eugene von Guerard, 

and later artists like Sidney Nolan, Ian Fairweather, 

Brett Whiteley and William Robinson. Not all landscape 

painting is representational or naturalistic. 

The Australian landscape is immense and varied, 

encompassing lush tropical coastal rainforests 

through to inland areas of rolling hills and dry plains 

and the harsh majesty of the outback. While early 

English artists often ‘beautified’ and ‘greened’ 

the landscape, taking a while to understand the 

different light and the wild beauty of the bushland, 

landscape in all its beauty, harshness and isolation 

has continued to be an important subject for many 

Australian painters. Some are visitors and travellers 

1: Lucy’s painting 

Summer Fountain, 

2009 

1 

Culliton’s family spent a year here in the 1970s and 

when she returned thirty years later, people remembered 

her. A previous owner of Bibbenluke Lodge, 

Henry Tollemache Edwards, managed the property 

for thirty years. He oversaw the successful evolution 

of the land from a place for sheep farming to 

an area for trout farming, and was a boisterous 

member of the local community, an amateur poet 

and a dog lover. 

Culliton spent 2008 making paintings of her house, 

garden and the immediate area around the house. 

This work was shown in Sydney in 2009 in the 

Bibbenluke exhibition. These works are intimate 

observations of her world as she explores the land, 

develops uses for all the sundry sheds and barns, 

and finds ways of depicting the particular foliage 

of certain trees or exact curve of a distant hill. The 

paintings show the garden in all four seasons, at 

all times of the day, from all angles. The view from 

each window of the lodge offers a new and interesting 

landscape. 

Like previous exhibitions, the Bibbenluke series 

focuses on a single absorbing subject. Just as knitted 

toys, cakes, horses, cactuses, chooks and the 

view from her studio at Little Hartley once captured 

her undivided attention, so did the garden at Bibbenluke. 

The paintings show an intimacy with the 

Curriculum relevance 

Lucy Culliton’s Big Skies would 

be an excellent film to show to 

middle and senior secondary and 

tertiary students of Art and Studio 

Arts. It could also be relevant 

to Australian Studies. Here, we 

have the opportunity to watch 

a painter at work. Culliton’s 

openness and delight at creating 

her landscapes and sharing them 

with her neighbours, friends and 

viewers along with her down to 

earth, direct and engaging nature 

make the film highly accessible. 

Watching this film should inspire 

all young artists to look more 

closely at the place where they 

live and perhaps inspire them to 

think about ‘landscape and place’ 

as subjects for their artwork. 

The activities in this guide are 

designed to encourage students 

to follow her process as it takes 

place in a particular environment, 

to develop a sense of what it is 

about Culliton’s work that makes 

it so popular, and to develop the 

skills to be able to describe the 

work and express their responses 

to it. 

Some images of Culliton’s 

paintings are included in the 

guide and there are links to other 

images of her paintings. Ideally, 

her work should be seen in the 

places where it is exhibited, 

but this is not always possible. 

However, any visit to a gallery 

that has examples of Culliton’s 

work could include seeking 

out her paintings. Her work is 

held in the National Gallery of 

Australia, Canberra; University 

of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum, 

Brisbane; Parliament House, 

Canberra; Macquarie Bank; Gold 

Coast Arts Centre; Mosman Art 

Gallery, NSW as well as in many 

private collections. 

You can view images of Culliton’s 

works by entering ‘Lucy Culliton 

images’ into a search engine 

or by looking at Sydney’s Ray 

Hughes Gallery’s website at 

. 


3

Solo exhibitions 

2009: Bibbenluke, Ray 

Hughes Gallery, Sydney 

2008: Stuff, Ray 


2007: The Show 

(Domestic Science), Ray 


2005: Tuscan 

Paintings, The Palm 

House, Botanic Gardens, 

Sydney 

2004: Cactus, Ray 


2002: Hartley 

Landscapes, Ray 


2000: Food Paintings, 

Ray Hughes Gallery, 

Sydney 

1999: Farm Paintings, 

Ray Hughes Gallery, 

Sydney 

1998: Paintings, Level 

Gallery, Sydney 

Culliton’s work has 

also been included 

in a number of group 

exhibitions including 

the Wynne and Sulman 

Prize exhibitions, 

the Archibald Prize 

exhibitions and the 

Portia Geach Memorial 

Award exhibitions. 

1: Lucy’s painting Summer 

Garden, 2009 

2: Study for Kimber’s painting 

subject and a sense of joy in being there, of being 

blessed to find it and alive with the possibility of 

making it her own. 1 

1 

Lucy Culliton’s strong sense of place infuses this 

new series of landscapes as she paints the skies 

of the Monaro Plains, the land belonging to her 

neighbour John Kimber, and on Anne and Charlie 

Maslin’s property ‘Gunningrah’. Culliton paints the 

countryside as she sees it, finding beauty in land 

that is presently quite degraded by the long-standing 

drought conditions and which in some places 

denuded and eroded through over grazing. 

Lucy Culliton 

Biography 

1966: 

Born in Sydney 

1996: 

Graduate Diploma of Fine Arts, National Art School, 

Sydney, Painting major 

Currently: 

Lives and works in Bibbenluke, NSW 

Lucy Culliton left Hornsby Girls High School in Year 

10 when she was accepted into Randwick TAFE’s 

prestigious graphic design course, an enviable 

achievement for a sixteen-year-old. Even so, Culliton 

realised it wasn’t graphic design that attracted 

her so much as leaving behind her high school 

subjects – especially English, a subject she freely 

admits defeated her. 

After graduating Culliton applied what she’d learnt 

in various posts at the Department of Education, 

Taronga Zoo and the Powerhouse Museum. 

However, after nine years she was tired of bending 

her talent to the world of office deadlines. So, she 

stopped. 

‘It wasn’t what I wanted to do and I was a bad 

graphic designer. So, when I was twenty-seven, 

I just dropped everything and went to art school’ 

(then East Sydney TAFE, now the National Art 

School). 

Straight away she knew she’d done the right thing. 

‘I was so hungry for it, I needed to meet people, 

meet my peers. And I needed to know you could 

draw and paint on any surface, that what you were 

making was still art.’ 2 

Collections 

National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; University 

of Queensland (UQ) Art Museum, Brisbane; Parliament 

House, Canberra; Macquarie Bank; Gold 

2 

Awards 

2006: Dubbo Lexus 

Mortimore Prize: 


Award 

2004: Kedumba 

Drawing Award 

2000: Mosman Art 

Prize 

1999: Conrad Jupiters 

Art Prize: 

Highly Commended, 


Award 


4

2 

Coast Arts Centre; Mosman Art Gallery, NSW. 

Reviews of her work can be found in newspaper 

articles and in catalogue essays to accompany 

her exhibitions, while images of some of her earlier 

work can be seen on the Ray Hughes Gallery 

website referenced earlier in this guide. 

Student activities 

Discuss and write about some or all of the following 

questions after watching the documentary. 

Subject matter 

• What are some of the things Lucy Culliton 

chooses to paint? You can get some sense of 

this from the names of her shows and also by 

looking at images online. 

• Is there a consistency in the range of her subject 

matter? 

• How do the ‘Big Sky’ paintings enlarge and 

extend her interests and range? 

• How are they different in both scale and subject 

matter to her earlier work? 

• How is the condition of the land Lucy paints 

both a product of natural (though extreme) 

weather patterns and human interventions? 

• What do you see as Culliton’s relationship to 

the land she paints? How is her relationship to 

place and to the land reflected in her artwork? 

Work process 

• Why do you think Culliton works en plein air 

1 

(outdoors) when starting her paintings and creates 

quite detailed oil paintings of the country? 

• What are the advantages of working on paintings 

of landscapes outdoors? 

• Are you aware of other artists who have also 

used this process? 

• What use does Culliton make of photos in constructing 

the final large canvases? 

• How is the company of her dogs (and the pig) 

important to Culliton as she works? 

• Describe Culliton’s working method from conception 

to finished work in relation to the two 

large landscapes we see her working on in the 

film. Include the media she works with, the under 

colour on her canvases, the subject matter 

and style, and the size of her pictures. 

• How are colour and texture important to the 

vitality of her work? 

Talking about the work 

• How important are the changing seasons in 

Culliton’s work? 

• What words would you choose to describe 

Culliton’s paintings? Compile a word bank that 

expresses how you respond to her paintings. 

• How do you define ‘beauty’ in artworks? What 

criteria do you use to decide if an artwork is 

beautiful or not? 

• John Kimber, whose land we see Culliton painting 

says, ‘I’d rather look at her paintings than 

the desolate scene we’re looking at. Farmers 

just see grey dead grass.’ 

Anne Maslin, one of her neighbours, whose 

land Culliton is also painting, says, ‘now we 

can see the landscape the way she sees it. She 

likes the dryness and the drought. We’ve seen 

the landscape differently because of the way 

she paints it.’ 

Charlie Maslin, who has planted more than 

40,000 trees on his property to slow the pace 

of water loss and erosion on his land says, ‘the 

1: Lucy in her studio 

working on Maslin’s 

painting 2: Study for 

Kimber’s painting 


5

1 

beauty she can see in something that can be 

quite depressing from a farmer’s perspective 

but from an artistic viewpoint it’s pleasing that 

she can provide a sense of such beauty’. 

How do her neighbours react to the paintings of 

their land when Culliton invites them for a viewing 

of the completed works? 

In what ways are their responses to her work 

important to Culliton? 

Writing about the work 

Lucy Culliton’s work has attracted a lot of critical 

attention since she began exhibiting in 1997. Many 

of her shows have sold out, which suggests that 

they strike a chord with people. 

Critical views 

John McDonald, a Sydney art critic who writes 

for The Sydney Morning Herald, has said of Lucy 

Culliton’s work: ‘she is simply one of the most talented 

painters in the country … astonishing in her 

consistency and powers of invention’. 

In 2004 he wrote: 

I would say that Lucy has a strong chance of 

staying the distance. People respond to her very 

quickly. Strangely this might work against her because 

the public collections are always very nervous 

about taking up what’s popular. But they’ve got 

to get over that. 

Since this piece was written, the National Gallery 

in Canberra has bought a painting from ‘The Show’ 

exhibition. 

1: Lucy with Anne and 

Charlie Maslin and the 

completed painting of 

their property 2: Lucy 

with John Kimber and 

the painting at his 

property 

‘I would say 

that Lucy 

has a strong 

chance of 

staying the 

distance. 

People respond 

to her very 

quickly.’ 

– John 

McDonald 

• What are the qualities in Culliton’s paintings 

that you think people respond to so positively? 

• How might being a naturalistic painter be seen 

as a negative by some art critics and even 

some public galleries? 

• Is landscape painting, particularly in a naturalistic 

style, a fashionable subject for artists in the 

twenty-first century? 

• In a review of one of Culliton’s earlier shows, 

‘The Show (Domestic Science)’ from 2007, 

John McDonald writes: 

Culliton is a creature of instinct who decides on 

a subject, then plunges in with ferocious energy 

… Culliton’s work displays a perpetual sense of 

discovery, but her high productivity means that 

many small pictures become relatively predictable 

variations on a theme. But there is hardly 

a dull moment in this sprawling vista of knitted 

toys, tea cosies, dolls, jam jars, scones, cakes, 

pikelets and decorated Milk Arrowroot biscuits, 

all accompanied by blue and pink slips of paper 

awarding first and second prizes to the artist’s 

friends and relatives … everything is so beautifully 

painted with a play of colour harmonies 

and contrasts, and a feel for texture that has to 

be seen with the naked eye. 

• Ray Hughes, who has shown Culliton’s work for 

several years at his inner-city gallery, describes 

her work as ‘obsessive, but with a twist. You 

get to see what she sees.’ 3 

Could these descriptions also be applied to 

the qualities we see in Culliton’s more recent 

works? 

• Write your own review of the paintings we see 

in this film, focussing on what you see as the 

most interesting qualities of Lucy Culliton’s 

paintings. 

What does Lucy Culliton say about her 

work? 

Like many artists, Lucy expresses her sense of 

place and creates meaning through her artwork, i.e. 

the paintings speak for themselves in the way that 

they reflect Culliton’s perceptions of, and responses 

to, her surroundings. 

2 


6

1: The painting of 

Kimber’s farm is just 

finished 

‘There’s 

nothing deep 

in my work; 

what you see 

is what you 

get.’ 

– Culliton 

In 2006 Lucy Culliton won the Portia Geach Memorial 

Award for portraiture, which is open only to 

female painters, with a painting called Self with 

Friends. You can see a reproduction of this painting 

at . 

The work was praised by the judges ‘as a composition 

and for the vitality of character in the figures 

matched perfectly by the verve of their painterly 

execution’. 

When Culliton was asked about the painting, she 

said: 

Don’t look for meaning in my work. There’s nothing 

deep in my work; what you see is what you get. I 

look at something and I like to make a painting of 

it, and I don’t want meaning. These guys are just 

mates of mine who I like to catch up with, there’s 

nothing heavy behind the painting. 

In 2004, her exhibition of cactus plants sold out 

within a week. She said at the time that it was nice 

that the work sold well as it meant she could still 

keep painting. 

While often reluctant to talk about why she does 

what she does, in Lucy Culliton’s Big Skies Culliton 

talks about how and why she works as she does. 

‘People question why you’re painting their place at 

this time because everybody’s place is just so dry.’ 

‘The drought is an artist’s subject; it’s not a farmer’s 

subject, that’s for sure.’ 

‘When it does rain, everything‘ll be green again and 

it’ll be a different picture so I’ve got to paint it now.’ 

‘The colours a day later after a little bit of rain 

are softer, a bit of a green tinge and the earth is 

browner, but the country’s still dry.’ 

‘Photos give me extra detail and help me join the 

sequences together.’ 

‘Painting big views isn’t as scary as I thought it 

would be.’ 

‘Painting is a very isolated job in itself. That’s why I 

keep a team of dogs to keep me company.’ 

‘The shelter shed is important in the painting as a 

focal point. We look for something familiar like a 

building.’ 

‘I try and suggest what I’m feeling as I’m painting it. 

I want it to look hot and dry … want the viewer to 

see the snow gums are struggling. I make that more 

important in my painting – the sky and the seasons.’ 


7

1 

‘I paint what I need to paint, what relates to me.’ 

‘People like my paintings … maybe because I’m 

just painting what I like.’ 

• Do you feel comfortable and confident providing 

written explanations for your artwork, i.e. intention, 

preparation, influences, process and execution, 

problem solving, intended audience etc.? 

• How important is it to paint what you know and 

like, what relates to you? 

• How do you know when a painting or drawing 

is finished? 

• The life of an artist is shown to be quite solitary 

in this film, demanding a self-imposed working 

program. What do you think are the advantages 

and disadvantages of working alone on your 

artwork, whatever it is? 

• Do you think immersion in a place is a precondition 

for an artist who wants to represent 

the landscape? 

• What an artist sees and how they translate this 

into a painting is a crucial aspect of any artist’s 

practice. How are paintings, such as those of 

Lucy Culliton, different to what can be recorded 

by a camera and displayed as photographic 

images? What do they show that is different to a 

photograph? 

• How do you see Culliton’s work fitting into the 

long and varied tradition of landscape painting 

in Australia? 

• In what ways is it helpful to stimulating your 

creativity to hear and see an artist such as Lucy 

Culliton at work? 

• What do you think is most impressive and 

interesting about her work as it is shown in this 

documentary? 

In 2004, talking after her successful ‘Cactus’ show 

Lucy Culliton said: 

Painting is so funny because it’s a job. It’s what 

I’ve chosen to do. It’s how I live. I love it. And if my 

paintings didn’t sell, I’d take a job to support my 

painting and paint at night, if I had to. But I’m lucky 

because people buy my work. It’s fantastic. I can’t 

really get over that. It’s weird. And my paintings are 

so expensive. But then I see that auction show on 

TV and I see crappy paintings going for $100,000, 

and I don’t know what to think. 4 

1: Study for Kimber’s 

painting 

‘I’m lucky 

because people 

buy my work. 

It’s fantastic.’ 

– Culliton 


8

Information about Culliton and her work 

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/10/01/1096527919917.html 

http://www.smh.com.au/news/arts/portrait-prize-eases-hangover-after-night-on-the-grog/2006/09/28/1159337282764.html 

http://www.rayhughesgallery.com/artDisplayExhibition.asp?artId=6585&exhibitionId=201 

See images of Culliton’s ninety-five Bibbenluke paintings from her 2009 exhibition and examples of her earlier works 

exhibited at Ray Hughes Gallery. 

http://nga.gov.au/Exhibition/OceantoOutback/ 

Images of Australian landscapes from a 2009 survey exhibition about the Australian landscape 

Endnotes 

1 

From an essay by Eleanor Zeichner published at the time of Lucy Culliton’s Bibbenluke exhibition at 

Ray Hughes Gallery in late 2009. 

2 

Matt Buchanan, ‘A singular obsession’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 2 October 2004, , accessed 24 February 2010. 

3 

ibid. 

4 

ibid. 

This study guide was produced by ATOM. (©ATOM 2010) 

editor@atom.org.au 

For more information on Screen Education magazine, 

or to download other study guides for assessment, 

visit . 

Join ATOM’s email broadcast list for invitations to 

free screenings, conferences, seminars, etc. 

Sign up now at . 

For hundreds of articles on Film as Text, 

Screen Literacy, Multiliteracy and Media Studies, 

visit . 

Notice: An educational institution may make copies of all or part of this study guide, provided that it only makes and uses copies : 

as reasonably required for its own educational, non-commercial, classroom purposes and does not sell or lend such copies. 


9

Lucy CuLLiton's S Big Skie - ABC Commercial

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?