AMA VICDOC Autumn 2024 - Magazine - Page 66
I CAN TRACE MY EARLY LOVE OF
WORDS BACK TO MY FATHER’S 1951
CAR NUMBER PLATE.
—
I started learning letters and numbers from
number plates at a very early age; my father’s
was the first one I learnt. Within a matter of
eight weeks, I'd learned probably a hundred
number plates, and knew all my letters and
numbers. When I arrived at prep aged five,
they immediately put me up to grade one. I
finished school at 16 and I finished medicine at
22, and I owed all of this to my father's original
number plate. So, when I bought my first car in
1974, I asked if my father’s number plate was
still available. It was, and I've had that number
plate ever since.
ALL MY WRITING IS NON-FICTION.
MY FIRST TWO BOOKS WERE ABOUT
TWO AUSTRALIAN MODERNISTS WHO
I DISCOVERED ON THE SAME DAY, IN
1976, AT A GALLERY IN ARMADALE.
—
It was showing a collection of modern British
works, and one of the paintings that I liked
best was by a painter called Horace Brodzky.
I recognised Brodzky as a Russian Jewish
name and imagined the artist left during the
Russian Revolution, went to Paris, and started
painting there in the French style. But the
gallery owner, Chrisopher Deutscher, told me
Brodzky was born in Melbourne in 1885. I was
surprised to learn an Australian artist of that
era was painting in that way. Then he showed
me a similar work by another contemporary
Australian modernist, Derwent Lees. A few
years later when I was a fellow in Leeds,
England, I found works by both artists in
the Leeds Art Gallery. I started looking into
them and realised that they exhibited in
numerous mixed exhibitions with the who’s
who of modern art, names like Manet,
Monet, Pissarro, van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne,
Picasso, Modigliani, Dali, Man Ray, and even
66
AMA VI C TO RIA
Jackson Pollock. Nobody in Australia was
interested in their art, so I started collecting it.
Then I decided to write about them.
I'VE ALWAYS BEEN A BIT OF AN
OUTSIDER, WHO EXPERIENCED
DIFFICULTIES AT OPHTHALMIC
MEETINGS, BECAUSE I WAS A VERY
LATERAL THINKER, WHO STARTED
DOING THINGS MANY YEARS
BEFORE COLLEAGUES, BOTH HERE
AND ABROAD, ALSO EVENTUALLY
STARTED DOING THEM.
—
All through medicine I also read a lot of nonmedical stuff. I was very interested in history,
art and art history. One of the disadvantages
of medicine is that you can spend your whole
life doing really good work, but the only people
who ever appreciate you when you’re gone
are your patients. Whereas, if you produce
some books on interesting topics, they will
be a legacy that you'll leave behind for your
children and your grandchildren, and maybe
for other people who discover those topics in
the future and also become interested in them.
Writing gave me something else; it built me
as a person.
THE ONLY THING THAT OUR RETINAS
PICK UP WHEN WE ARE LOOKING
AT THINGS IS STRAIGHT LINES.
AND THESE STRAIGHT LINES SEND
IMPULSES TO OUR BRAINS WHICH
ANALYSE THEM.
—
Most of our vision is created within the brain
from these signals delivered by the retinas as
a result of our previous experience looking at
things. At one point it occurred to me that if
the retina only responds to lines, and an artist
can appreciate this, all an artist has to do is
put the right lines in the right colours and right
tones in the right positions on his canvas, and
our brains will do the rest.
