The Long Run #2: Wendy Stavrianos on landscape, nature and gender barriers

What does it mean to create and innovate over six decades? Art Guide Australia’s newest podcast series The Long Run considers this question with three artists who have had careers spanning sixty years, each reflecting on their art and lives. What can they teach us about the life-stages of an artist?

In the second episode we speak with landscape painter Wendy Stavrianos. Working from regional Victoria, Stavrianos is known for her densely layered landscape paintings and use of line in painting, creating works that evoke different environments in ways that are beautiful, psychological and mysterious. From her early work in the 1960s, to her well-known Rape of a Northern Land series painted in Darwin in the 1970s, and her recent large-scale paintings, Stavrianos is integral to understanding landscape painting in Australia. 

In this episode Stavrianos talks about her childhood and youth, and how this set the scene for her to become an artist. She also discusses the gender barriers she encountered as a female painter, how she came to landscape painting, her incredible empathy with the environment and nature, and how mortality and mystery infiltrate her work.

The conversation is an interesting accompaniment to our first episode of The Long Run, where avant-garde painter Gareth Sansom talks about the mechanics and chance of making art, and his feelings on mortality and time. 

This series is kindly sponsored by Leonard Joel Auctioneers and Valuers, based in Melbourne and Sydney.

Produced and presented by Tiarney Miekus, music and engineering by Mino Peric.

Wendy Stavrianos is represented by Nicholas Thompson Gallery, Melbourne

Episode source