Sunday Mail, Brisbane 9/11/1969

An ‘imaginative’ art display by women

By Frederic Rogers

NOBODY will deny that women are enthusiasts in painting but it is rarely that a showing appears as corroborative of the fact as that of the Royal Queensland Art Society's "women only" exhibit at the society's rooms (Upper Edward Street).

Here, more than 40 women members have combined to provide a showing of paintings and ceramics that not only bears witness to the growing strength of the organisation, but holds hope of the birth of an awareness of contemporary trends in art.

Purely representational canvases, to be sure, still dominate the showing but pieces by younger members explore wider fields with a great deal of imagination.

At the Design Arts Centre (167 Elizabeth Street) two vastly diverse painters attract attention — Arthur Wicks, with "space" conceptions and Kenith Willes, with more or less traditional essays that indicate a preoccupation with atmosphere rather than conventional representa tion..

Willes' work I find uneven — some pieces full of the atmosphere he appears to be seeking, others seemingly cerebral rather than emotional -- an error for any painter concerned with reflective representation.

Frankly, Wicks leaves me unimpressed if not antagonistic. Whatever his intention — and that, I admit, I fail to perceive — the result as far as I am concerned is perhaps not formless but certainly a void.

Alan Baker's showing of predominantly flower studies at the Moreton Galleries (108 Edward Street) is a well-wrought, copy-book exposition of  the genre.