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The Gascoigne Puzzle

Writing around a life's core
by
April 2025, no. 474

My Own Sort of Heaven: A life of Rosalie Gascoigne by Nicola Francis

ANU Press, $85 pb, 410 pp

Buy this book

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The Gascoigne Puzzle

Writing around a life's core
by
April 2025, no. 474

Rosalie Gascoigne seems exemplary of the popular fable of the late-blooming woman artist. Famously, her first exhibition was in 1974, when she was fifty-seven. This swiftly led to national recognition, then international exposure at the 1982 Venice Biennale. So this is a story for the times. But the achievement of Nicola Francis, the artist’s biographer, is to unpack how, in Gascoigne’s case, artistic success in later life was the result of long, careful training in two other creative pursuits: flower arranging, as taught by the English authority Constance Spry; then, crucially, training and a thriving career in the most radical form of ikebana, the Japanese art of flower arrangement, through the Sogetsu School popularised in Australia by Norman Sparnon.

My Own Sort of Heaven: A life of Rosalie Gascoigne

My Own Sort of Heaven: A life of Rosalie Gascoigne

by Nicola Francis

ANU Press, $85 pb, 410 pp

Buy this book

ABR receives a commission on items purchased through this link. All ABR reviews are fully independent.

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