Year 8 Painting and Ceramics - Tatachilla Lutheran College

Clarice Beckett was born in 1887 in Casterton in regional Victoria and is recognised as one of Australia’s most important painters of the interwar period. Beckett depicted everyday views of her local environment including transient subjects such as moving cars, trams, lone figures, waves and shadows. Her misty paintings of modern Melbourne in the 1920s and 1930s captured the outdoors, including sea and beachscapes, and suburban street scenes, that often recorded the shifting effects of light– either in the quiet, early morning or in the stillness of the evening.

Year 8 students at Tatachilla Lutheran College engaged with the work by Clarice Beckett with the imagery, information, curator talks and videos provided in the online AGSA education resource. The students used imagery of Mclaren Vale and surrounding region as inspiration for a painting that incorporated tonalist techniques used by Beckett. Students worked on recycled bags in response to Beckett’s occasional use of unusual surfaces, as well as translating their paintings onto ceramic vessels. - Art Teachers Jessica Felgenhaur & Harriet Geater-Johnson