Skating by Eveline Syme 1929

Skating by Eveline Syme, 1929

This work is a linocut, printed in colour inks, from two blocks, cobalt blue and brown. This is a method of block printing where more than one piece of lino is used to create a design. Often each colour to be printed is applied onto a separate lino block. The printed image measures 12.2 centimetres tall by 15.3 centimetres wide.

It depicts a busy scene of skaters on a frozen lake set amongst a background of snow-covered hills, trees barren of leaves and a hut, set in the distance in the top right-hand corner of the work.

Three figures take centre stage and form the focal point of the work. Each of these figures wear ice skating boots, their blades scraping the ice producing curved lines rendered in deep blue across the surface of the work. The figure on the left leans back with arms outstretched towards the other two central figures, her hair is brown and cropped short around her ears and she wears a skirt with a chequered orange print. The middle figure is dressed from top to bottom in rusty orange coloured clothing with a peaked orange hat. His right arm is clasped fast by the third figure whose back is curved and leaning hard to the right. This figure wears a striped shirt and orange hat and skates.

In the far right- and left-hand bottom corners are another two skating figures both with arms outstretched from their bodies as if seeking balance on their skates and from the slippery ice they attempt to navigate beneath them. Both figures’ bodies are coloured in a solid block colour of deep cobalt blue, with the only other accent their expressions of concentration rendered in rusty orange brown and their warm woollen hats outlined in orange. Behind these five figures we see the silhouettes of a further four skaters all displayed in various poses, leaning, teetering, balancing, and gliding across the ice. The sense of movement with figures jostling to find a clear space on the lake to skate is accentuated by the curved intersecting lines and a two-block printing technique with a reduced colour selection which creates both a sense of action and rhythm in the work.

Both Eveline Syme and Ethel Spowers left Australia to study printmaking techniques like these from Claude Flight at the Grosvenor School of Modern Art in London. Inspired by the teachings of Claude Flight, they experimented with new techniques and ideas associated with the avant-garde art movements of British Vorticism, Italian Futurism and Art Deco. Flight’s students developed a style that combined abstraction and dynamism with geometric elements.

Skating is displayed in a dark brown wooden frame with an off-white mat board and is signed EW Syme in the bottom right-hand corner and titled Skating and editioned 6 of 50 in pencil in the bottom left-hand corner. The work is undated.