Mary Pridmore’s brush with power
Mary Pridmore’s life and work is inspired by the exraordinary women in her family, including her “nanny,” otherwise known as Dame Enid Lyons.
Lifestyle
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Artist Mary Pridmore chokes back a sob and pauses for a moment halfway through our first conversation.
We have been discussing her artwork and an upcoming exhibition when she abruptly veers off course while talking about her plans beyond the show.
“It’s all changed a bit now,” she says with a telltale tremble in her voice behind the brave veneer. “I was diagnosed with motor neurone disease about six weeks ago.”
Pridmore is determined not to let her diagnosis define who she is. It has changed her priorities somewhat, but she comes from a long line of strong women who have faced, she says, equally tough challenges, and she intends to do them proud.
Her new show, Postcards From Home Hill, is the third batch of small works in a series of three themed exhibitions called Homescapes, and features impressionistic paintings of the interior of Home Hill, the family home of her grandparents in Devonport and a place where she spent some of her childhood.
The granddaughter of former Tasmanian Premier and 10th Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons and his wife Enid, Pridmore is essentially descended from Tasmanian political royalty.
But while the legacy of that political dynasty did have a significant effect on her life, it was Enid, not Joseph, who was the more influential presence in Pridmore’s memory.
Some years after Joseph’s death in 1939 – he was the first Australian prime minister to die in office – Enid Lyons ran for parliament, herself.
The former teacher became the first woman elected to the House of Representatives and the first woman to serve in federal cabinet, retiring after three terms and remaining active in public life as a board member of the ABC and as a social commentator.
But this accomplished, important and impressive woman, known formally as Dame Enid Lyons, is known to Pridmore simply as “nanny.”
And to Pridmore, 65 from Hobart, it was her nanny’s personal struggles that distinguish her possibly more than her political achievements.
“There’s been lots written about nanny, she was a legend,” Pridmore says. “Nanny was a widow for 40 years, she gave birth with a broken pelvis, and there was a lot that was difficult about political life – there was a lot of public vitriol about Joseph leaving Labor Party and forming the United Australia Party.”
Pridmore uses the word “strong” a lot when speaking about her nanny, who she says is one of three strong, powerful women in her life, all of whom have inspired her in everything she has done in her life since a very young age, from her university studies and involvement in the feminist movement of the 1970s, through to her painting career and her defiant attitude towards her MND diagnosis.
The other two women were her mother, Rosemary Josephine, and her godmother, Mary O’Byrne.
Pridmore’s whole family were from the north west of Tasmania, Joseph Lyons being originally from Stanley and the Lyons family home, Home Hill, still stands in Devonport, today preserved as a museum.
Pridmore herself was born in Burnie but went to boarding school near Launceston because her mother had severe mental health problems for most of her life.
“Mum was very academic and very arty, she was brilliant in music and theatre, she could recite slabs of Shakespeare at the dinner table.
“My mum was born the same month my grandfather got into Federal politics and grew up in Melbourne and Canberra, one of 12 children. After the war mum worked for the Sun Herald for a while and then came to the North West coast of Tassie, married a man who had come back from the war, had a few children in quick succession and then just went profoundly mad.
“It was a tragedy, she was so sick she was eventually institutionalised with a major mental illness when I was 11. So I was sent to boarding school when it was clear mum wouldn’t recover.”
Pridmore believes this traumatic twist of fate might have actually been her salvation in some ways, because it gave her a shot at life in a different place, a new start.
“I was the only girl in my family, with four brothers, and I just know I would have sunk into that traditional female role of dogsbody if I’d stayed in Burnie,” she says.
“I went to Waterton Hall in the Tamar Valley, it was a farm and such a beautiful place. And after that I was at St Thomas More’s in Launceston.
“I do have memories of staying at Home Hill with nanny, too, because she used to step in when mum was ill and after mum was institutionalised, nanny used to take us to Hobart to visit mum.
“I think mum’s illness made me closer to nanny, and apart from boarding school I grew up with all these loud uncles and other wonderful characters around me when I was living at Home Hill.
“In the end I came to understand why mum went mad. I’m artistic, too, like her, and my son has a lot of mum’s gifts as well, he’s a talented performer. So I can put myself in mum’s shoes and understand why it all unravelled for her – life was very hard for women in the 1950s.”
The third part of this trinity of influential women is Mary O’Byrne, Pridmore’s godmother, who also took on an almost motherly role in her life.
“She was a remarkable woman, too. I was at her place when she met Bob Hawke, who was then president of ACTU, she invited him for dinner when I was 14. So I was born into a remarkable family.”
Describing both her grandmother and godmother as feminists, it was perhaps inevitable that Pridmore internalised those same values very strongly, especially when going to university in the 1970s.
“Neither nanny nor my godmother were the type to toe the line,” she says.
“I’m not a hardliner, I’m more the Enid Lyons variety of feminist, but feminism has complex elements and I was in young adulthood when Germaine Greer was writing. One of my self-portraits features the cover of her book, The Female Eunuch.”
Following in the footsteps of both of her grandparents, who were teachers before going into politics, Pridmore became a college English teacher, spending 14 years in the education system before deciding on a change.
“I went to art school in my late 30s, with the intention of changing from English teacher to art teacher,” she says.
“After I married and had our son, I thought I’d retrain in the fine arts, but found I did have a passion and talent for it, so I stayed at uni for ten years and came out of it with a doctorate.
“Inevitably when I got to art school, this profound story of my mother arose as a defining element and my PhD project focused on the theme of mother and daughter.”
Her last exhibition at Colville Gallery was a series of self-portraits, recording of her attempts to explore her identity in relation to those three strong matriarchs of her life, trying on their personas, in a way, yet always herself.
And in her latest series, Postcards from Home Hill, on show at Colville Gallery from August 25, he has produced a set of still life-style paintings, inspired by nanny Enid, who died in 1981, leaving Home Hill to be managed by National Trust Tasmania.
“When Joseph was premier, they sold Home Hill and lived in Hobart, but later they bought it back. Before nanny gave it away she took a lot of photos of the house as it was, picked flowers from the garden and made these huge flower arrangements, as they did in the 1970s.
“Then she made photo books for each of the families to keep, mine has been in my possession for the last 50 years.
“These paintings grew from those photographs, over the course of a couple of years. Photos are an aid to memory, so I don’t think you can separate photos from memories.
“That said, these are not realist paintings, not paintings of photographs, they are impressionistic, loose recreations inspired by the decor and colours.”
Pridmore says she is taking a break from painting now. Her MND diagnosis has forced her to take stock of many things and plan for the future.
She says her illness appears to be slow to progress and so far she is only experiencing some weakness in her right leg, but she and husband, psychiatrist Saxby Pridmore, are already working to prepare their home for when her mobility starts to suffer.
“This is really the first time I’ve been able to talk about it without sobbing uncontrollably,” she says. “And because of the pandemic restrictions I was given that diagnosis over the phone, which wasn’t ideal.
“But I’ve been lucky that I have such an amazing circle of friends and family, and my son is doing his internship to be a doctor so he has been able to help out with access to so much information.
“It’s such an insidious disease, I’m still experiencing the shock of coming to terms with it. The way people’s faces drop when you tell them, it says it all. The average life expectancy is just two to five years after diagnosis.”
Pridmore says the devastating news has forced her to take stock of her life and has made her more appreciative of everything she has experienced. She is listening to her old records again, she is gardening, and she plans to continue working on the board of chamber music festival Musica Viva.
More importantly, her family history, especially those three amazing women, has been a great source of inspiration and courage for her.
“One gets courage from one’s forebears. Between these three powerful women, all of them dealt heroically with some bloody awful things. Mum had the worst possible thing happen to her, my godmother had polio, my mother and godmother both married men who had been to war, they lived through a difficult period in history.
“My mother and father were really beautiful human beings, they dealt with it all with as much dignity as anyone could. Dad was small town lawyer who looked after lots of people in his community, too. And they never descended into bitterness or called themselves victims, they just stood up and got on with it.”
So for now, Pridmore is letting those priorities shift and learning to roll with them. Content that she has lived her life to the fullest, travelled, painted, climbed mountains and more, she is currently focusing on her new exhibition.
“There is some talk of the works showing at Home Hill at some point, as well,” she says. “I would really like to see that happen. All these works belong in the north of the state, really, that’s where they’re drawn from.”
Postcards from Home Hill, by Mary Pridmore, is showing at Colville Gallery, 91A Salamanca Pl, Hobart, from August 25 - September 8
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