STUDIO education resource - Museums & Galleries NSW

LUCY CULLITON
LUCY CULLITON
HARTLEY, NSW
When this photograph was taken, Lucy Culliton lived at home with her
parents on their property at Hartley, west of the Blue Mountains in New
South Wales. Her studio, a large prefabricated metal shed, was her own
private refuge. Culliton built the studio after winning a painting prize and
describes it as more than a place for painting. In her own words, ‘I’ve got
my lounge, my kettle, my music. I’ve got my menagerie of animals, I’ve got
my garden.’
These things are very much part of Culliton’s daily life and they often become
the subjects of her paintings. According to art critic John McDonald ‘she
surrounds herself with animate and inanimate things, and then paints their
portraits’. Culliton likes to explore how things look en masse and rather
than painting a single plant or object, she often crowds her paintings with a
single subject to make large, riotous compositions.
In Cactus 2004 many different types of cacti fill the painting. Although
cacti flower at different times, Culliton has shown them all in flower in this
painting. Culliton obsessively paints one subject until she feels that she has
exhausted that subject, and then she moves on to something else.
Born in 1966, Culliton now lives on a property on the Monaro Plains in
southern New South Wales. Her new home includes her cactus garden.
See Culliton step out of the
studio and into the classroom:
www.abc.net.au/arts/stories/s2705313.htm
A menagerie is an
old fashioned word for a
collection of animals. Name
all of the animals you can
see in Culliton’s studio. Don’t
forget to scan the walls for
evidence.
Play a game of spot the
difference where you
compare and contrast
Culliton’s painting Cactus
2004 with the painting that is
unfinished in her studio.
By cluttering as
many things as possible into
this photograph of Culliton
in her studio, photographer
Ian Lloyd has used the
same ideas of repetition
and crowding that Culliton
uses in her paintings. What
is the overall effect of this
technique?
Do you have a collection?
Is it of animate or inanimate
things? Photograph your
own collection, or someone’s
you know if you don’t have
one. Give your series of
photographs a title that tells
the audience something
about the collector.
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