Rosemary Valadon’s Sydney exhibition invites everyone to enjoy her Hill End studio
Rosemary Valadon’s new paintings reveal a private world inside the artist’s beautiful Hill End studio.
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TO enjoy the beauty and tranquillity of Rosemary Valadon’s Hill End studio, you have to drive 280km into a remote and historic pocket of the NSW central west.
But a new exhibition in Paddington will let everyone immerse themselves in Valadon’s magical working space.
The exhibition at Wagner Contemporary, titled Interiors, opens on Saturday. It will introduce a new series of paintings, large and small, which pulse with the quiet pleasure Valadon takes in the tiny corner of Hill End where she has made her home.
It’s all in the detail — the open book, the cushions on a comfortable couch, the ceramics that belonged to her mother.
And there’s Paris the cat, sunning himself in the studio doorway. Paris and his brother Roman came to Valadon after someone abandoned them in a Bathurst park. Decorative they may be, but these felines are skilled rabbiters as well.
Hill End is the former goldrush town whose dilapidated charm has entranced countless artists including Margaret Olley, Donald Friend, Tim Storrier and Brett Whiteley.
Valadon fell under Hill End’s spell while on a residency in the Art Gallery of NSW’s cottage in 2003. In 2005 she bought a semi-abandoned, one-bedroom miner’s cottage that was being invaded by brambles.
Valadon transformed the 1870s house and garden and named it Rosslyn. Surrounded by the fruit trees she has planted, it’s a haven for magpies, lorikeet and finches.
Valadon was born in Sydney and has travelled widely. But at Hill End she has her strongest sense of home. After buying the old cottage, building the studio in the garden was her priority.
“I always feel attached to the land here,” Valadon says.
“It feels like my skin — what I surround myself with.”
Rosemary Valadon: Interiors, Wagner Contemporary, 2 Hampden St, Paddington;
July 7-30, wagnercontemporary.com.au