Jock Marshall - One Armed Warrior A Bright Sparcs Exhibitions

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jane Marshall


Born 1920 in Sydney to a third generation Australian father and an English mother who was brought up in Belguim. The first two and a half years were spent in Belguim, but after that Sydney became home base; a strange experience for both parents (father had been brought up in Melbourne). Despite his bad health after Gallipoli, they gave me and my sister and brother a comfortable and secure ambiance in which to grow up and we were competently educated at North Sydney schools. And we benefited from their liberal attitudes and intellectual curiosity.

Because I showed a certain persistant talent for drawing and painting over years, I was sent to East Sydney Technical College which housed an art school - technically very good, but extremely conservative which is no doubt why Percy Lindsay recommended my going there. The Lindsay's abhored that European mob - Picasso et al - who saw the world with splintered eyes. Later I continued creating but earned money by designing silk fabrics. Then as war was raging and the Navy began taking in women I joined up and entered another world for four years. When I was released in 1945, I taught design for a year and then took off for England to study that "European mob" of painters and be with Jock Marshall, who whirl-winded into my life in Townsville.

Post-war England was utterley different and often difficult. In order to earn money and travel in Europe, I started to write scripts and do broadcast talks for the B.B.C. Overseas and Home Services. In 1950 Jock and I married, having lived together for three years. So began ten years in a house in Hampstead filled with children, stimulation and work - I did much scientific illustrating for Jock and many other zoologists in this time.

In 1960, with three children, we returned to Australia after fourteen years away. For me, never having been back, it was a time for learning all over again - but the challenge brought out a new feeling of creativity which has lasted through many years.


Jock Marshall: One Armed Warrior by Jane Marshall
Published by the Australian Science Archives Project on ASAPWeb, 25 February 1998
Comments or corrections to: Bright Sparcs (bsparcs@asap.unimelb.edu.au)
Prepared by: Elissa Tenkate

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