Drawn Together
The drawing lives of Nora Heysen, Judy Cassab and Margaret Woodward

This exhibition is an exploration of the perceptions, passions, insights and range of human emotions that only great artists are able to elicit so easily from each of us. Heysen was the first woman war artist in World War II and the first to win the Archibald Prize, in 1938. Cassab won the Archibald Prize twice. Woodward has won the Wynne Prize and Portia Geach Portrait Prize twice. All three artists have made a contribution to the dialogue that is Australian art.

Heysen, who died on 31 December 2003, has been an Australian icon of the ‘quiet achiever’ in the arts. Cassab is a living treasure through her extraordinary engagement with a diversity of Australian cultural life and creative explorations of abstraction and portrait painting. Margaret Woodward has made contributions to art in Australia through her extraordinary skill, distillation of contemporary experience and explorations that result in a synthesis of conscious and subconscious aspects of visual expression.

Having drawn together for many years Heysen, Cassab and Woodward formed close bonds. They are all strong women in their own particular ways, and each has an unerring passion for art, a drive to excel, and a sense of creative exploration that ensures the most exciting discoveries for the viewer – as evident in the nuances of a momentary line. This exhibition explores the relationship between these three women, follows their ‘drawing life lines’ and the nature of drawing within their art. The exhibition also shares the dialogue concerning drawing now – as a method of making artwork, as a way of seeing, as an art form in its own right and in terms of its role in our consciousness.

Drawn Together is an extraordinary gathering of creative expression using drawing in its many forms. It is a gathering that spans the lives of these three artists and cover nearly 80 years of art making in Australia.

This exhibition is supported by Visions of Australia, an Australian Government Program supporting touring exhibitions by providing funding assistance for the development and touring of cultural material across Australia.