Doris Remembers
Oil on Canvas, 94 x 73cm
Doris examined the room where her portrait was hanging. On the table nearby stood a single crimson Waratah in a turquoise vase. She enjoyed looking at the iconic Australian flower, appreciating its bold design. Sometimes the brilliant red colour of the flower brought back memories of the war when she worked as a nurse in hospitals and camps. She could recall how, when there was the brief opportunity in between dressing wounds and administering medicines, she painted her patients, with the morning light streaming in from the windows behind, framing their figures in a bright halo. And then of course the harrowing images that confronted her as she entered the Belgen Belsen camp in 1945 after it had been liberated. She was the first artist to witness the horror of so many dead, diseased and starved bodies in that camp. How could one convey the terror and brutality, the sorrow and courage, with a pencil or brush?
A loud squawk brought her back into the room. The colourful menagerie of Australian birds in the mural to her left were having a raucous dispute. Their loud chatters, chirps, screeches, and calls blended into a colourful hullabaloo. But despite the noise, she adored them. They were funny, wise, obnoxious, and opinionated, and their antics and banter provided her with wonderful companionship.
The mural reminded her of the panels she painted for the Grill Room in the famous Queen Mary ocean liner. Oh, that room was wonderful! More happy memories filled her: the set and costumes designs she created for plays - Noel Coward was her favourite director.
At that moment, the crested shriketit hanging to her left shook its black crest disapprovingly at the cacophony of the wallpapered birds and pleaded: ” Pipe down you boisterous lot- inside voices please!” Doris laughed out loud.
What a crazy world we live in, where cruelty and beauty coexist simultaneously… she would never be able to understand this.
In remembrance of Doris Zinkeisen