Hi everyone,
This week I’ve been researching an Australian artist and printmaker I came across, Margaret Preston.
I found her work quite inspiring and her journey through art intriguing and insightful. The below YouTube video provided a valuable overview of understanding the diversity of her work.
I don’t know if it might be the similar-related imagery I’ve been working on in the print designs, particularly related nature, but my favourite work of Preston’s I came across this week would have to be of the red wheelflower, pictured below. I think this image really captures the essence and spirit of Australian flora’s quiet strength and resolve to ‘just be’. I like how the red flowers are the central focus, however the movement of the top, overhanging leaves are also quite remarkable with their own place and sense of shelter for the flowers. It reminded me of a sort of canopy, and interestingly, when I researched the firewheel tree it originates in Queensland and New South Wales rainforests originally.
I found it interesting that Preston didn’t use yellow for the circular pollen bits at the end of the red flowers, as this is what the firewheel photographed in real-life seems to have. Perhaps due to a lack of yellow paint available, or an artistic decision – maybe Preston thought yellow would detract from focus on the redness of the flowers, and the relationship between the red and greens of the overall artwork. I think what I took away from this is the suggestion that more can be said, by less. As in, sometimes the carefully-decided use of less colours can be more impactful to the viewer than lots or at least more use of colours. I think this is especially true in printmaking designs, where simplicity can be quite telling, and there can already be a lot going on or noise and design being communicated to the viewer, in lines and other design decisions (e.g. amount of, and locations of ‘empty’ space).
I think, also, that Preston has a fair bit of unused space in the bottom third of the design, allows the viewer to focus on the details of the leaves and flowers in the artwork’s top two thirds.
I found some weeks ago, especially with the Toucan design, the surprising impact of having a border in a print.
In Preston’s work, the border contains this as a sort of snapshot or lens ‘zooming-in’ to a section of nature. She inverts the stereotypical representation of nature as the backdrop, and instead makes not only nature the focus, but a part or relatively small section of nature, forefront. The decision for a black border also makes the middle three branches or trunk of the tree stand out.
Above: Margaret Preston’s Stenocarpus – Wheel Flower c. 1929. Sourced July 25, 2025, from: https://www.ngv.vic.gov.au/margaret-preston-stenocarpus-wheel-flower-c-1929/
