Print for Scarlet's Fund
Linocut print {from a suite of 20}Scarlet was a musician, singer, writer and traveller and was a passionate believer in social justice – and a student at The University of Melbourne studying Arts. On March 31st, 2012, Scarlet fell through a roof at a party in Melbourne. She died of her injuries five days later on April 5th, just before her 21st birthday. Scarlet is the daughter of Simon Spain and Victoria Ryle and sister of Georgia. This fund has been established by them in her name to support some initiatives that she would be proud of and to continue the tradition of bringing beauty through the arts to people, particularly in developing communities. (text with thanks from here)
This year Simon and Victoria chose one of Scarlet’s favourite poems—Musee des Beaux Arts to be the theme for a suite of prints by 20 artists from across Australia. W.H.Auden wrote this poem in response to Pieter Brueghel’s, painting The Fall of Icarus. (featured).
The first edition of prints are now printed, signed and will soon be ready to be sold. (details of online sales off the Fund’s Website forthcoming)
If you would like to know more about Scarlet, her extraordinary life and the fund established in her memory, please visit the website.
Pieter Brueghel, The Fall of Icarus : Oil-tempera, 29 inches x 44 inches, Museum of Fine Arts, Brussels.
Musee des Beaux Arts
–W. H. Auden
About suffering they were never wrong,
The old Masters: how well they understood
Its human position: how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;
How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting
For the miraculous birth, there always must be
Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating
On a pond at the edge of the wood:
They never forgot
That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course
Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot
Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer’s horse
Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.
In Breughel’s Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away
Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may
Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry,
But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone
As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green
Water, and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen
Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,
Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.
