SKIPPER, SONIA (1918-2008)

"Roses" (1983) 
oil on canvas
50 x 38cm
signed lower right
*private collection, Melbourne
 
Skipper is a forgotten Australian Modernist. She was part of a pioneering family at the Montsalvat artists' colony in Eltham. She was the daughter of Lena & Mervyn Skipper, founding members of Montsalvat. In the late 1920s, while living in a house at fashionable Eaglemont, designed by Walter Burley Griffin, the Skipper family mixed in the intellectual and artistic circles of Melbourne. Among their regular visitors was the painter Justus Jorgensen, just returned from travelling and working in Europe. The whole Skipper family fell under Jorgensen's spell. Lena, formerly a student of Julian Ashton, enrolled herself & her three children in Jorgensen's painting school. In the early 1930s, the family uprooted from Eaglemont and moved to a house in Little Latrobe Street so that the children and Lena could be close to Jorgensen's studio in Queen Street. In 1934, when Jorgensen began building his dream — a colony for artists in Eltham — the Skippers joined the project, & Sonia found her milieu at Montsalvat. There she could not only paint & mix with exciting people, she could also explore her other interests, including building. She rapidly became absorbed in the adventure of making mud bricks and laying stone. Jorgensen believed that to be an artist one needed to be able to control materials and understand their forms. Under his direction, Sonia rapidly developed her skill as a stone carver; many of Montsalvat's corbels and crenellations are her work. She also dabbled in painting. She also joined in Montsalvat's many discussions about philosophy and aesthetics. A retrospective of her work was held in the government-sponsored gallery in nearby Berri, and at the same time she was named a "National Living Treasure" by the South Australian Government. In 2005, she wrote and published an account of her remarkable life in a straight-speaking autobiography simply titled My Story. Her paintings are incredibly rare.