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    The Privacy of Art
    The Privacy of Art
    The Privacy of Art
    Ebook94 pages1 hour

    The Privacy of Art

    By Roslyn McFarland

    ()

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    About this ebook

    *** Bronze Medal Winner 2016 Global Ebook Awards ***

    This is a story about love. It’s set in the beautiful Blue Mountains area of Australia and revolves around a Bloomsbury-like group of artists, who live there from the Sixties to the present day.

    Neil Baxter and Isabella Shaw, share a successful artistic partnership – but to whose cost? Their unorthodox relationship, built upon mutual admiration, strong bohemian values and libertarian principles, has some painful ramifications when their daughter, Persia, marries her father’s ex-lover.

    But more than this, Neil and Isabella’s story is the backdrop for the emotional heart of this novella, which is the evolving relationship between Isabella’s son, Hugo and his childhood friend, Meg Taylor.

    Told through a series of interwoven narratives, where the past is always bubbling to the surface, The Privacy of Art explores the ideas of artistic and emotional experimentation involving love and desire; truth, deception and collusion; ambition and artistic jealousy.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTellwell Talent
    Release dateJul 9, 2014
    ISBN9780992537449
    The Privacy of Art
    Author

    Roslyn McFarland

    Roslyn McFarland is a writer and editor of a range of educational publications, including a series of best-selling HSC English text books. She has had several short stories published and her novella The Privacy of Art, which is set in the Blue Mountains where she has lived for over thirty years, is available as an ebook on all online platforms. All the Lives We've Lived is her first novel.

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      Book preview

      The Privacy of Art - Roslyn McFarland

      The Privacy of Art

      Roslyn McFarland

      This is an IndieMosh book

      published at Smashwords by MoshPit Publishing

      an imprint of Mosher’s Business Support Pty Ltd

      www.indiemosh.com.au

      Copyright © Roslyn McFarland 2014

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to the original place of purchase and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Disclaimer

      The characters and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

      Contents

      About The Privacy of Art

      About the Author

      Dedication

      Epigraph

      Now

      1961

      Now

      1978

      Now

      1984

      Now

      1990

      Now

      2002

      Now

      2010

      Now

      Like artists, we possess our worlds imaginatively, searching for meaning, for love and for acceptance, but often at a price to ourselves and to others.

      About The Privacy of Art

      This is a story about love. It’s set in the beautiful Blue Mountains area of Australia and revolves around a Bloomsbury-like group of artists, who live there from the Sixties to the present day.

      Neil Baxter and Isabella Shaw, share a successful artistic partnership – but to whose cost? Their unorthodox relationship, built upon mutual admiration, strong bohemian values and libertarian principles, has some painful ramifications when their daughter, Persia, marries her father’s ex-lover.

      But more than this, Neil and Isabella’s story is the backdrop for the emotional heart of this novella, which is the evolving relationship between Isabella’s son, Hugo and his childhood friend, Meg Taylor.

      Told through a series of interwoven narratives, where the past is always bubbling to the surface, The Privacy of Art explores the ideas of artistic and emotional experimentation involving love and desire; truth, deception and collusion; ambition and artistic jealousy.

      About the Author

      Roslyn McFarland is the writer of a range of educational publications, including a series of best-selling HSC English Literature study guides. She’s had a number of short stories published in various anthologies and is currently writing a novel. Roslyn lives in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney and has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Technology, Sydney.

      Dedication

      For Peter with love & gratitude

      Epigraph

      "Soon our reckoning and what we have

      imagined will meet out here, at some

      ground zero time, beyond the shadow sticks

      of palings—on a plateau of light

      so brilliant not even tone could forge

      its tricks with shape. Now earth rushes

      on all sides, we take bearings from each other;

      a half completed phrase, eyes sliding aside,

      awkward gestures. The signs we make

      signify our ease with the interior life,

      the privacy of art."

      —Robert Adamson

      Beyond the Pale in The Golden Bird: New & Selected Poems Black Inc., 2008

      Now

      Welcome to Waratah, the Blue Mountains home Neil Baxter shared with Isabella Shaw until her death in 2002.

      We always start our tours of the house and grounds here in the dining room because of a painting I’m about to show you. The work is central, not only to the mission of the Waratah Trust for its ongoing restoration and repair of the estate, but also to any understanding of the life Shaw and Baxter created together.

      So if you wouldn’t mind looking to your left, you’ll see what’s considered to be one of Neil Baxter’s finest early paintings. Note its photographic, super-realist quality, a style he pioneered in the late fifties. Baxter called this painting Interior, and as a meticulous depiction of this snug dining room, some critics view it as a scene of studied serenity, an authentic representation of bohemian creativity at work. At first glance, I’m sure you’ll agree.

      However, I’m going to ask you to move a little closer and observe the painting’s composition and its thoughtful construction. There, on the right, is Paul Sparrow Garner hunched over an open exercise book on the large, round table. If you know anything about him, you may well assume he’s writing a novel or poem.

      And of course there, in the left hand corner of the painting, seated in front of an easel, is Isabella, or Bella, as she preferred to be called. You’ll see that she’s wearing a loose fitting, navy and red artists smock and she appears to be painting a still life.

      On the other side of the dining table is the fireplace with a bulky armchair beside it. On the mantelpiece is an assortment of plates and china jugs, and above it, is a small portrait of Garth Shaw, Bella’s husband and the father of her two sons, Owen and Hugo. His shock of red curly hair seems at odds with his aristocratic features summed up in the haughtiness of his aquiline nose, which we see here in profile. The clever positioning of this portrait within the painting makes Garth Shaw appear to be looking away from the human activity within the room itself. His outward gaze leads our own eyes to the open window in the painting’s background with its view of the garden – just like Eden in full bloom. Together with the patterned floor rug and the floral curtains, this would normally suggest joy and liveliness, but the browns and greys in the foreground overwhelm the eye, making the predominant mood of the work somewhat sombre, perhaps even bleak.

      I guess some of you are now thinking that Interior may be an expression of Neil Baxter’s feelings of entrapment. Let’s then scrutinise this painting a little more.

      See how Bella is the more solid figure of the two. She occupies a quarter of the picture’s space. Now consider the distance between her figure and that of Sparrow. Doesn’t it appear

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