Dorothy Mary Braund (1926–2013) was an Australian post-war figuration and contemporary feminist artist, whose practice included painting, printmaking and teaching.Design and Art Australia Online, "Dorothy Mary Braund," Design & Art Australia Online, accessed 1 October 2019. Braund's extensive career was instrumental in contributing to the Modernist art scene, along with a generation of significant women artists including: Mary Macqueen, Barbara Brash, Anne Marie Graham, Constance Stokes, Anne Montgomery (artist) and Nancy Grant.Art Nomad, "Dorothy Mary Braund" Art Nomad, accessed 1 October 2019. Braund's first solo exhibition, held in 1952 at Peter Bray Gallery in Melbourne, launched her career and from then on she had consistent shows and exhibitions. Braund has had approximately 29 solo exhibitions and participated in 25 group exhibitions throughout her career.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 43-44. Braund is also a part of the Cruthers Collection of Women's Art.
Early life Dorothy Braund was born in Malvern, Victoria on 15 November 1926.Dorothy Braund, Papers of Dorothy Braund, (unpublished manuscript, 1943-2002). Braund was the only child of Mr and Mrs Gordon Braund.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 22. As an infant she made marks with a gold bangle in overlapping rhythms making large circular patterns on the white kalsomined wall next to her cot.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 9. Braund's parents encouraged her love for drawing as a child and often presented her with drawing and painting implements and paper for her to doodle on.Dorothy Braund, Jim Alexander (ed.), Fathers & sons by Dorothy Braund: and impressions, Jessie l. Evans (1860-1943), (East Malvern VIC: Jim Alexander Gallery, 1983), 1.
At school, Braund won both the Art and Sewing Prizes two or three years in a row. Braund discovered a magazine photograph of an American sculpture of a woman washing her hair, which she cut out and stuck in her homework book as the first influence of complete simplicity. The figure was almost portrayed as one arch and was perfectly explained to Braund.
Education Braund was educated in Malvern at St Margaret's School, Melbourne from 1933 to 1940 and then Lauriston Girls' School from 1941 to 1943. The painter Louise Fairley, a friend of her aunt Isabel Tweedle, recommended that Braund attend The George Bell School in 1943 to study art. However, George Bell thought it was more suitable that she enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, as she was so young at 17.
In the meantime, she began studies at RMIT in 1944. Braund found the industrial design, lettering, clay modelling and drawing in the course too complex. From 1945 to 1949 Braund studied at the National Gallery School under the instructors William Dargie, Murray Griffin and Alan Sumner.Eagle, Mary & Minchin, Jan, The George Bell School: students, friends, influences, (Deutscher Art Publications, Melbourne & Resolution Press, Sydney, 1981), 234-35. During this time, Braund's cohort were invited to choose their teacher and Braund chose Sumner who taught the modernists. The analytical approach taught by the Gallery school helped her find her simplistic painting style. Whilst here she won prizes for drawing the figure and still-life painting.
Her efforts enabled her to be chosen by Sumner who sent Braund and other students to the George Bell School for extra study and to learn to draw quickly. The school proved a major influence in her work. Her formal classes with Bell ended in 1949 Braund also subsequently studied in England from 1950 to 1951.
Involvements Braund met John Reed, who she fell for, when she visited the Contemporary Art Society Exhibition. She describes Reed as an 'interesting looking man' who was sitting crunched at the desk eating grapes. She signed up that day to join the Contemporary Art Society.
While studying at the National Gallery School, Braund and another student named Judy Hunter exhibited modernist works in 1943 with the Contemporary Art Society (CAS).Furby, Paula, Australian Women Artists and the CAS 1938-1959, (Flinders University PhD, 1999), 91. However, CAS confronted them following the report in Truth that they had entered the works as a joke, resulting in a threat of eviction. Braund apologised and continued to exhibit with CAS, whereas Hunter refused to apologise and resorted to legal advice to help deal with the situation.
Braund re-joined the Contemporary Art Society in 1952, where she became a regular 'Thursday night' participant at George Bell Studio from 1954. She was a supporter of Bell's teaching ideas at the studio and some of his former pupils went to her for lessons after Bell's death in 1966. Bell wrote to Braund before he died: 'On your kind will depend the carrying on of Art in this country.'Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 14. George Bell appreciated her ability to use form, colour and surface to create good pictorial design.
In 1954 Braund created the Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA) Christmas card design.Dorothy Braund, Jim Alexander (ed.), Fathers & sons by Dorothy Braund: and impressions, Jessie l. Evans (1860-1943), (East Malvern VIC: Jim Alexander Gallery, 1983), 2.
Braund also gave talks on ABC Radio from 1961 to 1964, and reviewed children's books for The Australian newspaper from 1969 to 1977.
Teaching Braund taught art at three Melbourne schools in the 1950s. From 1952 she taught two to four days each week at Lauriston Girls' School, Malvern.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 23. In 1955, she was selected as "Art Mistress" at St Catherine's School in Malvern. At Rossbourne House in Hawthorn, Braund taught disabled children.
Travels She travelled internationally in the 1950s and 60s, across Europe in 1950–51, Italy and Greece in 1958, as well as Pakistan, Persia, Turkey, India and Asia. Braund hitchhiked in England and the rest of the continent, where she explored sights and galleries. She spent time in London with fellow Australian artists Michael Shannon and John Rogers in 1951. In 1958 she visited George Johnston and Charmian Clift and their three children on Hydra.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 24. Upon seeing the works of her favourite artists, Georges Seurat and Piero della Francesca, she found them better that she expected. She travelled to Greece three times as she was motivated by the simplicity of colour and shapes, finding it the perfect setting for her painting style.
In 1961 she again left Melbourne, this time with Guelda Pyke. They travelled on a freighter Chadraka and took a Kombi van on board, subsequently driving from Karachi through Pakistan, Iran and Turkey. They met fellow artist Nancy Grant on their travels.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 11. In 1962 she returned to Australia. The sights and experiences of Braund's extensive journeys greatly inspired her works.
Braund's residence changed multiple times over the years; she lived in Asia, India, Greece, England and Australia. In 1989, she moved from her family home at Sorret Avenue, Malvern to a cliff-top retreat at Mornington.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 25.
Art practice Braund aimed to achieve ultimate simplicity in her work which is flat, carefully designed and small scaled. She worked in oil, Gouache or watercolour using colours of black, white, brown, grey and other tertiary colours with neutral backgrounds. These delicate colours evoke Italian Fresco paintings. Many of the themes in Braund's work drew on familiar everyday experiences and social activities such as public rituals of the Australian beach.Artemis Framing , "Dorothy Mary Braund," Artemis, accessed 1 October 2019. Her work is either playful or gently satirical.Eastgate Gallery, "Dorothy Braund," Eastgate Gallery, accessed 1 October 2019. Braund's artworks often illustrate scenes of intimate lovers, parents with children, relationships between individuals and groups expressed through articulations of form and shape of the human body.
Braund's work focused on form and design as the main expression, characterised by rhythmic line tension, close colour harmony, tone, shape and reduction of the object. She employed vertical and horizontal lines for effect and rhythm. Her works achieve total economy whilst simultaneously maintaining the essence of the subject.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: survey exhibition 1949-1974, (Hawthorn, Vic: Eastgate Gallery, 1994), 2. In the 1940s and 50s, Braund rejected the national Romanticism of Australian art and wanted to convey emotion through observation and perception of line and form and representations of the familiar and mundane.Dorothy Braund, Dorothy Braund: retrospective, (Castlemaine, Vic: Castlemaine Art Gallery and Historical Museum, 2006) 15. She believed the story of a painting was about creating new things. During the mid 1960s, the figures in her work became more angular and abstract.
Braund's Bali paintings were inspired by the sense of relationship, sympathy, compassion and tenderness of kids constantly with their fathers. She describes this notion as 'straight lines.'Dorothy Braund, Jim Alexander (ed.), Fathers & sons by Dorothy Braund: and impressions, Jessie l. Evans (1860-1943), (East Malvern VIC: Jim Alexander Gallery, 1983), 4. As she reflected on her oil painting 'Baby,' Braund stated, 'I find the head a bit disturbing, heads and faces are so personal that they intrude and give you a new interpretation. If you don't have faces you get the entire feeling between two bodies." She also reflected on her oil painting 'Ruffled Jumper,' 'I got sick of my boring heads which always look like eggs so to avoid the issue I put a hat on the child. I would happily paint folds in clothing until the cows come home. I find it much easier than painting flesh.'Dorothy Braund, Jim Alexander (ed.), Fathers & sons by Dorothy Braund: and impressions, Jessie l. Evans (1860-1943), (East Malvern VIC: Jim Alexander Gallery, 1983), 5.
Braund worked in Melbourne and produced many images of women during her career, as did her contemporary Joy Hester.Felicity St John Moore, Classical modernism: the George Bell circle, (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria Catalogue, 1992) 104. Braund worked in her Malvern glass-walled studio with views of the sea, which she shared a love for. In 1967, she painted a portrait of Barbara Brash for the Portia Geach Memorial Award, a prize for women's portraiture. The painting was completed from familiarity with drawings of her subject, whose life and practice connected personally with her own. It is a complete likeliness of the subject, yet totally abstract when the work is turned upside-down.
Around 1972, Braund began working more often with gouache on paper, as this is a fast technique in exploring composition and aesthetic challenges.
Braund stated in 1994, "I've always been knocked out by simplicity. To me it's got such impact… far more than anything fussy… because you have to get it right. There's no chance for accidental effects. If you are simple everything has to relate and work."
Reception