Elisabeth Cummings

Born in 1934, Elisabeth Cummings studied at the National Art School, Sydney (1953-57) before spending a formative decade in Europe, where she studied with the Viennese avant-garde painter Oskar Kokoschka at the ‘School of Vision’ in Salzburg, Austria. Returning to Sydney in 1969, she taught at the National Art School for over three decades and has held a printmaking residency at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales, Sydney, since 2005.

Since 1976, she has lived and worked at Wedderburn in Sydney’s south-west, following a bequest of several acres from two local landowners, Barbara and Nick Romalis. Five artists – Cummings, Joan Brassil, Fred Braat, Roy Jackson and, later, John Peart – made up the “Widden Weddin” group, united by their inspiration in the Australian landscape. In 1994, Cummings’ studio and a great number of works were destroyed in a fire, in the wake of which she painted After the fires – Wedderburn (1995).

Cummings has received greater recognition for her work over time and, indeed, her later work is thought by many to reflect a more assured and sensitive artist. John Macdonald, for example, wrote of Cummings’ works from 1996-2012 that “They are so superior to the earlier works that one could be looking at two different artists…Cummings turned seventy in 2004, and has since gone on to make the paintings of her life. She is the outstanding exception to the unwritten rule that Australian artists tend to lose their way as they get older.”

Her first retrospective, Elisabeth Cummings 65-96, Campbelltown Art Centre, Sydney (1996) was held when she was 62. A second major survey, Luminous, was held at SH Ervin, Sydney (2012) and, most recently, another retrospective, Elisabeth Cummings: Interior Landscapes, was held at ANU Drill Hall Gallery, Canberra, touring to the New England Regional Art Museum (2017). In 2011, Cummings was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for her services to the visual arts.