Deirdre Bean
Deirdre's watercolour paintings reveal the beautiful forms that can be found within nature. Her close study of her subjects result in intricate detailing and subtle graduation of tones, creating botanically correct depictions.
Painting in watercolour on paper and vellum, her meticulous artworks are created out of many patient hours.
Deirdre’s involvement with Your Friend the Enemy follows after her first visit to Gallipoli in 2013, resulting in a response that has developed conceptually overtime. She states, “The first visit prepared me for the 2014 trip. I wanted to have something of the landscape in my work, something tangible. My work is precise and detailed, usually on clean white paper. I wanted to subvert this pristine presentation somehow and it became obvious I needed to immerse my paper in the soil where so many of our young men died. I chose The Nek, one battle site where their blood and bones have become one with the earth.
I chose to paint the landscape as they saw it; the micro landscape if you like, of the flora, shells, and small creatures they may have laid amongst as they thought of home and the ones they held dear. On this paper I painted images of flora and found objects. It was a few days into the expedition when I was offered findings of fellow artists on the trip. Pieces they’d found in the field; bullets, both live and spent, shrapnel, and pieces of a broken pottery rum jar. Some of these I incorporated into my work as tangible evidence of our 1915 campaign in a landscape now back to its vivid glory rudely thriving on what lies beneath.”
Deirdre lives and works in Sydney and Port Douglas in Far North Queensland where she is painting the mangroves of Australia. Environmental threats to Australia’s flora has inspired Deirdre to paint species of environmental importance and vulnerability.
Bean has won a gold medal at the Royal Horticultural Society in London for her series of eight Syzygium species in 2006, and a Silver-gilt medal for her series of Australian mangroves in 2012. In 2013 Deirdre was commissioned by Australia Post to paint four stamps of the shrubs of Christmas Island.
Image 1: Cape Helles, 2014, watercolour on paper and vellum
Image 2: .303 inch British Mk VII 2014, watercolour on paper and vellum
Courtesy the artist
In this preview of the Your Friend the Enemy documentary, meet some of the artists involved as they first encounter the surrounds of Gallipoli.
Including your local newsagent, you can also purchase the Your Friend the Enemy Special Edition at select Art Gallery shops listed here.
In commemoration of the centenary of the Gallipoli campaign this year, Your Friend the Enemy curated by John McDonald, is opening at S.H. Ervin Gallery.
The Your Friend the Enemy trip wasn’t nearly finished after the artists flew out from Turkey in 2014. The project had only just begun.
As we near the launch of the Your Friend the Enemy exhibitions, we look back to the personal links that inspired Your Friend the Enemy.
For artist Idris Murphy The Lost Diggers, accompanied by a show at the State Library held personal connections to the ANZAC legend.
Despite its geographical distance from Australia, Gallipoli holds great relevance and connection to contemporary Australian history. Linked by personal stories and histories to the battles...
After three days straddling the Golden Horn, there is a sense of itchy feet; artists eager to get into the field, but at the same...
Deirdre Bean • Elisabeth Cummings • Steve Lopes • Guy Maestri • Euan Macleod • Idris Murphy • Michael Nock • Peter O’Doherty • Susan...
Cummings works quietly and consistently. Her work, while influenced by landscape,her process is led by intuition.
Steve Lopes is a painter and printmaker known for his figurative landscape works.
Macleod produces dark, expressive landscape paintings
Maestri’s work documents the many journeys he has made across the country and the experience of the Australian landscape.
Your Friend the Enemy – the title of this exhibition – is inspired by a recent discovery of 160 letters written by grandfather Charles Idris...
Michael Nock is a practicing artist primarily focusing on oil painting, his works are imbued with the deep emotion that is etched into the landscape.
Peter O'Doherty's paintings are tonal assemblages of oblique geometric detail imbued with dense shadow and vivid Australian light.
Susan O’Doherty is a mixed media artist whose work ranges from large abstract paintings through to small mixed media assemblages as well as acrylic portraits.
Holding a personal connection to the trip, New Zealand artist Stanley Palmer’s Father fought at Gallipoli.
Travelling informs the work of respected Australian contemporary painter Amanda Penrose Hart.
The landscape has always been Robba's muse, but in this expedition the meaning goes beyond the surface of the painting.
Earthy tones and layered washes result in the vibrant flowing landscapes by Luke Scibberas.