Nan Jones – Pushing the Paint Around

15 March 2017

Nan’s creativity has been passed on to both her children

Nan Jones took up painting on retirement thanks to encouragement from the CAE and her daughter. Cataracts slowed her down for a while but she’s picking up again now.  

Bob Evans talked to Nan about her art and life.

Talking about art and artists comes naturally to Nan Jones.

Nan is the third resident artist, in company with Norma Copeland and Pat Coe, at Vasey RSL Care’s Independent Living Units in Manningtree Road.

Nan came to live here through reading a newspaper article about retirement and aged care. Her husband, who had served in New Guinea, had died in car accident and she was on her own. After comparing various facilities, Nan discovered her first choice had a waiting time of up to eight years.

“I was already 66 and I thought I could be dead by then, so I chose Vasey Housing (as it was back then). I moved in on Australia Day 1992.”

Nan’s first Vasey Housing residence was in the former units at Wattle Road, and when they closed, wanting to stay in Hawthorn, she was able to move to Manningtree Road.

Nan has been painting for around 25 years, taking it up in her late 60’s. She will celebrate her 92^nd birthday on Bastille Day this year,

When Nan began working in the late-1970’s, she describes herself as “a Mrs Everybody” in accounts: first she worked for Hermann’s, the high fashion importer of women’s shoes and bags and then for Artmat, an art and craft store specialising in equipment and materials for schools.

Nan has a ‘thank you’ card from Bill Bergen, then owner of Artmat, attesting that through her “calm and capable presence she has been the cornerstone of our business”. 

Deciding that she needed a hobby to keep herself occupied when she finished work, Nan enrolled to study painting at the Melbourne CAE in Flinders Lane.

“A lot of people take up painting later in life courtesy of the U3A and the CAE. Most of them do it for their own satisfaction,” Nan says.

“My daughter, who was an art and craft teacher, reminded me of that when I was wondering about whether I should try it. I told her I couldn’t even draw a pussy cat that looks like a pussy cat and she said: ‘Mother, you just have to be shown how to do it. And remember, you’re doing it for yourself – not for other people.’”

Once she’d started classes, Nan received further encouragement from her CAE teacher who pushed her to enter some of her paintings in the Herald Outdoor Art Show, which used to be held in the Treasury Gardens. She sold three paintings – which Nan puts down to luck.

River Landscape

“The first bit of luck,” she says, “was seeing this little boat, tied up on the bank of Gardiner’s Creek, near where I used to live in Glen Iris. I thought it would make a nice painting, so I sketched it and went home and painted it. And it sold. I didn’t put a high price on my paintings because I didn’t think they’d be worth much, but people bought them.”

Nan has always liked landscapes. She sees huge potential in whatever landscape she is looking at. But without a car and no longer able to drive, she doesn’t have the same opportunities for lucky discoveries. She also stopped painting for a time when cataracts dimmed her eyesight.

“It’s pretty useless trying to do things if you have problems with your eyes, but I’ve had the cataracts removed and my eyes are coming good and I’m getting back to painting now,” says Nan.

She is getting interested in painting flowers and has been experimenting with colour on black canvas. She fetches two works in progress, one of poppies and the other a bonsai. The talk of flowers and discussion of her work leads us on to one of Nan’s all-time favourite artists, Margaret Olley. Nan shows me a video of a documentary on Olley and her life’s work. “She is one artist I really, really like. And I’ve watched this video over and over,” Nan says.

I mention visiting the Margaret Olley Art Centre at the Tweed Regional Art Gallery: it has a replica of Olley’s former Sydney studio in Paddington filled to overflowing with more than 20,000 objects and we joke about the amazing clutter of Olley’s home. “You wouldn’t want to eat a meal cooked in there. You’d have to go out for meals,” she says.

Nan was the person who inspired and encouraged Manningtree resident, Norma Copeland, to start painting. “I was painting at the time that Norma came around to see me after she found the car keys which she thought she’d lost. I had a brush in my hand and she said: ‘I wish I could do that.’ And I told her that she could, and she ought to have a go.

“I told her what to get and where to get it and the first piece of art that she produced – I was absolutely stunned. And she just progressed from that. She read a lot and practiced a lot and every now and again she would come down to me for suggestions and advice. She has done so well, and good on her. She is completely self-taught”.

Blue Jug and Pears

Both Nan and Norma like painting with oils, while Pat Coe, the third member of the Manningtree group, prefers watercolour. Nan says she likes the feel of “pushing the paint around”. When I tell her that that’s exactly how one of Western Australia’s favourite artists, Guy Grey-Smith, described his approach to painting, she is not surprised. “Even when you’re house painting, there’s just that wonderful feeling of the slap of the brush,” she says.    

For a time, her son Bruce also pursued an artistic career as a leadlight artist and teacher. He set up the Armadale Stained Glass Centre, near the corner of High Street and Kooyong Road. Nan shows me a card displaying a stained glass Madonna that was produced by one of Bruce’s former students, Gerard Flemming, and which was installed in one of the windows of St James’s Church in Brighton.   

Bruce eventually wound up his stained glass business because of his health concerns about working with lead. He has since moved to Queensland and built an entirely new business manufacturing timber roof trusses. But Nan still has a gorgeous stained glass lamp that Bruce made before he gave up the leadlight work.

Nan also has a treasured memento from her daughter, Pam’s artistic venture. Hanging prominently in her living room, is a distinctive Arthur Boyd print that she bought from the opening exhibition of a gallery set up in Gordon House by Pam and a group of her colleagues.

As Nan and I admire the work and wonder at its almost underwater imagery, as if Boyd has sketched floating strands of kelp and seaweed, she points out two faces that emerge from the tangle of lines. “And that’s a woman’s leg, there,” Nan says. Suddenly I see it, and then the faces appear quite clearly – a couple are kissing in a very Arthur Boyd way.  

Seeing the Boyd print afresh, through Nan’s eyes, is a revelation that matches the experience of meeting these unique and remarkable women, catching glimpses of their memories and their experiences, the joys and sorrows, witnessing their frailties and their strengths, and above all their resilience, making the most of the rest of their lives in Manningtree Road.

Abstract

Two Gum Trees