Five bells

Five bells was my first commission to paint in situ to cover a wall … I didn’t hesitate. I brushed a line around the core theme, the seed-burst, the life-burst, the sea-harbour, the source of life. Inside and around this core, I painted images drawn from metaphors and similes in [Kenneth] Slessor’s poem of our harbour city, and from my own emotional and physical involvement with the harbour, and with my young family in Watsons Bay … I wanted to show the Harbour as a movement, a sea suck, and the sound of the water as though I am part of the sea ... The painting says directly what I wanted to say: ‘I am in the sea-harbour, and the sea-harbour is in me’. John Olsen, 1999

You can listen to Five bells online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Five bells is an episode from Kids audio tour by Art Gallery of New South Wales.

This episode is 1:31 long.

This episode was published on Aug 24, 2010.

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