B. 1902 – 1993

As well as working as a printmaker and painter, Helen Ogilvie served as the first director of Peter Bray Gallery from 1949 to 1955. She was born in New South Wales and spent her childhood accompanying her mother into the country on watercolour expeditions. These trips laid the foundation for Ogilvie’s connection to nature and the landscape, a theme that would resonate throughout her career. 

Ogilvie studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne but found the rigid academic environment stifling. She struggled to find her footing until an encounter with Claude Flight’s book on linocutting in 1928, leading to an experimentation with modernist printmaking techniques that Ogilvie employed to explore the intersection of technology, weaponry, and machinery. The war years – during which she was a member of the Red Cross rehabilitation service – led Oglivie to reflect on her work and consequently, she turned from printmaking to oil painting. 

Ogilvie’s later work focused on rural landscapes, capturing the slow decay of traditional Australian dwellings and the decline of rural idealism. Her paintings, which depict scenes of solitude and rural abandonment, offer a poignant commentary on the rapid urbanisation and environmental changes of the 20th century. Through these realist renderings, Ogilvie chronicled the landscape that shaped her early life, leaving behind a legacy that resists the dominant narratives of progress and industrialisation.

To read a more in-depth biography of the artist, click here.