Denise M Taylor

Writing Consultant I Editor I Proofreader

Life is precarious — even more so since COVID-19 infiltrated our lives a year ago and we’ve had to learn to live with daily uncertainties. But compared with other countries, Australia is perhaps ‘luckier’ than most (I think of Donald Horne’s 1964 book ‘The Lucky Country’). So, although I do feel ‘lucky’, I am a Melburnian who is suffering withdrawal […]

If you think Edgar Degas (1834-1917) just painted pretty ballerinas in soft pastels, then you’ll know otherwise once you’ve visited the National Gallery of Victoria exhibition featuring works spanning more than five decades of the French artist’s career. You’ll find out that this enigmatic man depicted modern Parisian life—warts and all—in many intriguing ways. Some pigeon-hole Degas as an Impressionist, […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Unprecedented mass surveillance and the implications for our private lives, now and into the future, are scary—invisible monsters inhabit the built environment, listening and taking note. Gardens can be our escape, however bizarre. In my mind I make a return visit to one of Italy’s most mysterious and ingenious sixteenth-century gardens: Sacre Bosco in Bomarzo, 42 miles north of Rome. […]

Categories: Musings on Art

French sculptor, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), brought sculpture out of the doldrums and gave it a surface energy never seen before. For Rodin, it is the surface that expresses the results of internal and external forces. I appreciated this when I visited the Musée Rodin in Paris and saw the freshness of terracotta and plaster casts formed and moulded by Rodin’s […]

Categories: Musings on Art

A dynasty is defined as a family spanning a number of generations—the most notable dynasties have the trappings of wealth, power and ambition. But the Boyd family, a complex network of artistic individuals often referred to as Australia’s pre-eminent dynasty of artists, does not bode well with the label of ‘dynasty’. A new exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Barbara Hepworth’s garden in St Ives, Cornwall, is small and walled, but there are foregrounds and views which are framed by the ‘holes’ that pierce most of her sculptures. This place of art echoes Hepworth’s philosophy as an artist: “to infuse the formal perfection of geometry with the vital grace of nature”.  A bird’s-eye view of Barbara’s ‘back-yard’ would be […]

Right now, leaves are falling in my garden and the days grow colder . . . I am reminded of a day in mid-January 2009 when a wintry sky threatened rain as I approached Villa Lante in Bagnaia, about forty miles north-west of Rome.  Water is a feature of this garden which was begun by Cardinal Gambara in 1568; what […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Some people feel uncomfortable about abstract art; many would rather dive into a pool of mud than travel an hour by car to see an exhibition featuring art that has been reduced to abstraction with the purpose of conveying ideas and emotion. However, there is nothing muddy about the illuminating abstract art in the current exhibition, ‘Vibrant Matter’, at TarraWarra […]

Categories: Musings on Art

Melburnians have their favourite hang-out places: a lane, an arcade, an outdoor café, an open square, a grassy knoll, a river bank; many are just content to wander. Most ‘places’ are graced by some form of public art such as a statue, painted poles, murals, a sculpture, or that contentious form of art, graffiti. In 1980 a sculpture called ‘Vault’ […]

There’s a pig flying down Swanston Street. I saw it only recently on a cold wintry day in Melbourne as I waited for the lights to turn green at the Burke Street intersection. The sun was shining and the sky was so blue that I looked up and there it was … a pig with wings, balancing on top of […]