Margaret Preston

Bird of paradise 1925
hand-coloured woodcut on brown paper
National Gallery of Victoria
Purchased 1942

This is one of Preston’s most famously decorative woodblock prints: the rhythmic composition and heightened palette in Bird of paradise demonstrates her predisposition to subjugate reality to suit design and schematic imperatives.

Preston’s decorative approach reflects her early reading of Arthur Wesley Dow’s Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers published in 1899, in which he elaborated his theory that a painting ‘is essentially a rhythmic harmony of coloured spaces’.

Of added relevance to Cutting Through Time—Cressida Campbell, Margaret Preston, and the Japanese Print (and to the distinct practice of contemporary artist Cressida Campbell), is the display of Preston’s Bird of paradise woodblock in a joint exhibition she staged in Sydney and Melbourne with artist Thea Proctor in 1925. A Melbourne review stated: ‘The woodblock for a bird of paradise is on view and from it one is able to grasp something of the processes required to produce these amazing things.’
_{[Australasian, Melbourne, 28 November 1925]}