God in the garden

Anne Graham has been painting for some seventy years. Born in Vienna, she came with her family to Australia in 1939, where she was enrolled at the art school at RMIT in Melbourne. She has developed a style of painting that reflects her joyous approach to life. ‘There’s so much around us’, she says, ‘despite all the negative things we might read or see on television. That’s why I try to present all of the simple positive things we see around us like gardens and flowers and markets.’

Over 1973-6 she painted a wonderful series, depicting the twelve months of the Australian year in vibrant colours. Gardens feature in many of the works. This later developed into a major collection of sixty paintings of the Botanic Gardens in Melbourne, ‘A Garden for All Seasons’.  They are now on display at the Austin Hospital. Her most recent exhibition was of more gardens, this time the tropical botanical gardens of Cairns.

‘If there’s a God, God must be in that garden’, she says. ‘The inventiveness and colours, the lushness and tropical exuberance and shapes … I still can’t overcome this enthusiasm.’

Art Director David Thomas describes the richness of Anne’s art:
Anne Graham’s art delights in the rich fruitfulness of nature, usually peopled with those of related interests. Gardens feature prominently, evoking the earthly paradise of the Garden of Eden, vineyards of plenty, or tropical splendours. The busy engagement of her people recall those of Bruegel the Elder, especially his great paintings devoted to the months and seasons, the finest of which are in Vienna, Anne’s birthplace. Perhaps there is also a touch of Hieronymous Bosch and his Garden of Earthly Delights translated into the twenty-first century.

All is conceived in the most appealing colours, humoured with occasional touches of whimsy. Above all, her art is civilised, in concept and exploration of the relationship of humans to nature—the landscape, the city, botanic gardens, and the humble vege patc.