A devotee of Impressionism — whose wholehearted dedication disproved her father’s misgivings about a career in art — has launched her first solo show on the Sunshine Coast after painting and exhibiting around the world more than 60 years.
Langdale-based painter Hermione Green last week opened a three-week showcase of her work, My Fabulous Trip, in the Joe’s Lounge space of the Gibsons Public Art Gallery.
As a child in Argentina (she recalls riding to school on horseback at the age of six), she announced her unequivocal desire to become an artist. Her father replied, “Unless you marry a millionaire, how are you going to make a living?”
The patriarch prescribed a course of study in advertising and design. Green travelled to Buenos Aires to study anatomy under artist Jean Jose, learning to paint fast. “I wanted to paint people,” she said, “starting with the gauchos.” Romantic figures of South American cowboys appear in her pastels, like Gaucho (a solemn profile of a moustached rider, his weathered face outlined in fierce, angular strokes), and acrylics like Tango Argentino, where crimson-draped women spin around an atmospheric dance floor in the arms of lithe-limbed cattlemen.
Her father visited Jose’s studio to check on his daughter’s progress. “I’m afraid to tell you she’ll never be a commercial artist because she won’t do what I tell her,” said Green’s teacher. “Ah,” replied her father, “that’s why I brought her here: because she won’t do what I tell her either.”
Green sketches directly onto the canvas, decisive and deliberate. She works in a variety of mediums including oils, acrylics, pencils and pastels. The exuberant realism of acrylic studies like Flowers in a Vase 2 appear alongside florid abstract harmonies such as Tangled Garden. Explosions of colour defy the canvas’s two dimensions: thick rivulets of colour stream earthward, frozen in place to become stalks and petals.
Her art depicts a longlife fascination with Indigenous cultures and their traditions — both ethereal and earthy. “In South America, the Indigenous cultures are so vibrant, and there’s a connection through them to the dynasties of previous civilization,” Green said. “They call me a gringa, but I can speak Spanish perfectly. A lot of them speak [Andean dialects] Quechua and Aymara depending on whether they’re from Bolivia or Peru. They’re all bilingual. And when they want to talk about [an outsider], they switch to Quechua.”
During an extended bus trip through the region, she requested a stop to answer the call of nature on a plateau devoid of vegetation — and privacy. Fellow bus travellers laughed uproariously as they watched her struggle with tight-fitting jeans; in that moment she vowed to adopt their style of bright and conveniently loose-fitting skirts.
Such visceral experiences only whetted Green’s appetite for adventure. In the 1970s, she trekked to California, then resided in Hawaii until her visa expired, and finally reached Canada. After marrying, her husband — an author of voluminous legal texts — told her: “Pick the country where you want to paint; as long as I’m barefoot in a warm country I’ll write my books.”
The two crisscrossed the globe. Albums of photographs and small-scale artworks displayed in Joe’s Lounge chronicle their restless pilgrimage. Her portraits (like the demure Mother and Child [Guatemala]) are all inspired by genuine characters whose names and stories Green recalls. Her inaugural public exhibition, held early in her career at a Scottish estate 12 kilometres from Balmoral Castle, attracted 50 people (“I nearly sold out,” she recalled). During this month’s show in Gibsons, she will frequent the gallery, eager to trade tales with visitors.
“Some people say I should write a book,” added Green, “but I’m still too busy painting.”
My Fabulous Trip featuring works by Hermione Green continues at the Gibsons Public Art Gallery until Dec. 22.
