ENA JOYCE - FIVE DECADES

CATALOGUE ESSAY

Ena Joyce is perhaps one of the most talented and versatile, yet under-rated, artists of her time. With a penetrating artistic vision, she has an ability to distil the essence of her subject matter, from domestic interiors and still lifes, to landscapes, gardens and figure studies. Traversing 55 years of her artistic career in Sydney, Melbourne and abroad, this exhibition of some thirty paintings and works on paper reveals her lifelong interest in composition and colour.

Joyce is an 'intimiste' and a colourist. In her palette and touch she emulates the post-impressionist French 'intimiste' painters Bonnard and Vuillard, who painted a cosy domesticity of heavily patterned interiors, open windows and casually set tables, with chromatic richness. Using colour not line as the controlling element of composition, Joyce translates sensation through colour. Her use of scumbling brushstrokes in a loose painterly manner brings a warmth and softness to her controlled compositions. For Joyce "composition is key". Using multiple focal points, her most successful works draw the eye to hidden details across the picture plane.

Joyce studied at East Sydney Technical College in the 1940s with her peers Margaret Olley, David Strachan and Margaret Cilento. She was the youngest recipient of the NSW Travelling Art Scholarship in 1946, enrolling at the London School of Arts and Crafts the following year. Here she had the opportunity to study life-drawing under Bernard Meninsky, a former teacher of Jean Bellette and Donald Friend. Travelling throughout England and Europe, Joyce spent much time studying and sketching in the major European museums, before returning home abruptly in 1950 due to family tragedy. This early time abroad reinforced her passion for the Renaissance, particularly the Venetian masters.

Taking up a teaching position in Ballarat, then marrying and moving to suburban Melbourne, Joyce settled into a life of domesticity. As she explains, "the lives of many women artists of my generation were constrained by domestic demands. Much of one's time was taken up with food and its preparation. Perhaps because of this later works ... have my dining room as their subject matter". Her artistic output continued fitfully during this time, often in the form of satirical studies of eccentric characters she encountered. In 1951 her portrait of Macquarie Galleries director Treania Smith was hung in the Archibald, and in 1977 she won the Portia Geach Prize with her portrait of George Feather Lawrence.

"All my painting life from earliest student days, the human figure has been an integral part of my work. Often the figures appear detached from their surroundings but merging with them. In both interiors and still life and also in landscape, there is a feeling of human presence".

In the late 1970s, with her child now grown, Joyce's artistic passions developed fruitfully. She exhibited regularly with Macquarie Galleries and later The Painters Gallery, and once again travelled to Europe, spending a year living and working in the south of France in 1980. Following the death of her husband in 1984, Joyce embarked on a number of painting trips to explore the Australian landscape, with trips to the Bungle Bungles in WA, Alice Springs, Wilson Promontory, the Snowy Mountains and Tasmania.

Now in her late seventies, Joyce continues to paint daily from her home overlooking Sydney's beachside suburb of Coogee. She is represented in the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; Parliament House Collection; University of NSW; University of Queensland; Artbank; most state and regional galleries, and numerous private collections.

Katherine Rosenthal
February 2005