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A Remarkable
Australian Artist
Chronicles Our Heritage!
Most of us tend
to be fairly busy concentrating on our
everyday life and our immediate sphere of interest, with little or no attention being paid to things we see around us everyday, like buildings in the streets and houses in the neighbourhood, unless we have some professional interest in that sort of thing. This is however, could be contributing to us missing out on valuable history and obscuring a lot of visual beauty that could otherwise be appreciated and enjoyed. Australia is, of course, a young country and many assume that there is no rich or varied heritage when it comes to architecture, but it is not so at all. Architecture, in any country, tell a story about the people and their journey in history, Australia is no different, and in spite of many a good example of our early architecture being in dire need of restoration, one can still follow that journey from the early convict days and see the many tell tale signs of how our buildings have evolved and the way they have been influenced by European architecture, especially in the various Victorian and Federation styles. One unique artist has made documenting Australian heritage architecture her life work and through literally hundreds of exquisite paintings, she single handedly created an astounding chronicle of actual heritage buildings from all over Australia, documenting styles and locations in such an uncanny accuracy and detail. Meet Olga Gostin of http://allegria.com.au The website presents a fascinating tale about how this artist began such a massive undertaking to paint these Australian heritage buildings, after she has retired, a task most of much younger artists will not even attempt. To put this monumental series in perspective Olga has painted, Wait for it, more than 300 paintings from 1981- 1991. This actually represents one painting completed every twelve days over a ten year period, an astonishing accomplishment by any measure! A bit about the artist herself is covered in the web pages, she was born in 1926, she was educated in Shanghai, in an European community. Migrated in 1949 to Australia, she furthered her art studies at the East Sydney technical College but has never started painting in earnest actually until she retired in 1981. Olga often travels on foot scouring suburban Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne for these interesting buildings, taking photographs and making mental records of their locations, colour depth and light, of that she says, “as if I take two pictures one with the camera and one with my mind and even many years later I still can recall all these detailed visual information”. Looking at all these remarkably detailed watercolours, one realises they must have taken her hundreds of painstaking hours to do and that by itself shows how dedicated she is, a shining example of how focused an artist should be. Right through the site, one finds lots and lots of beautiful images of gracious houses built with elaborate ornamentations to show off the owners wealth or status at the time. I wondered, while admiring all this plethora of styles, how many of us have never noticed such wonderful and subtle evolution of design over time and how a distinctive Australian version has often emerged from the imported plans to suit the local conditions and materials. The website also contains heaps of other valuable information about the technical differences of styles and period characteristics with an expanded and descriptive account of the various kinds of roof tops complete with a glossary of definitions which is an education by itself! I must also say that this website is an excellent example of good design, from the soft and restful colours, to the clear cut layout, to navigation aspects and the way information is presented and let us not forget that it is the fabulous watercolours and the remarkable artistic talent of Olga Gostin is what gives this website it’s existence and appeal, your outlook will be dramatically
changed in regard of
old buildings. I for once will be
looking at my old locality with new eyes, seeing it all afresh! So if you want to find all about parapets and finials, crow-stepped gables or turrets with lots of immensely enjoyable paintings thrown in for good measure, head for http://allegria.com.au You will be thrilled! |