Mary Macqueen

Mary Macqueen

The year 1970 was a watershed for Mary Macqueen: after the death of her husband of 40 years she began to travel extensively. The blurred images of the landscape, caught in glimpses from a speeding car, train or plane became her vision.

Macqueen was born in Melbourne in 1912 and, as a 16-year-old she enrolled at Swinburne College to study commercial art. At 18 she married and, over the next ten years, she was engaged in caring for her three small children. From the 1940s Macqueen was again free to draw and she had her first solo exhibition of watercolours in 1945.

In 1952 Harold Freedman opened up the commercial art workshop of the Melbourne Technical College (RMIT) once a week to allow artists to experiment in printmaking. Macqueen joined the printmaking class in 1956 and later that year, despite being a novice, was invited by Tate Adams to lecture on printmaking for the new course just established at the RMIT.

Macqueen has always felt most relaxed with lithography. Even though it is a time-consuming process, it directly conveys the freshness and spontaneity of the artist's drawings. In 1960 she converted an old mangle to a printing press, and this enabled her to pursue her printmaking in the quiet of her home.

Her work became freer and more experimental. She sought continually to simplify her images; her lines, which were already spontaneous and economical, became almost scratchy notations. Macqueen's landscapes are now forms of calligraphy, filled with quick patches of colour.