printmaker and painter, was born in Brisbane on 4 January 1916, daughter of Joselyn Salisbury and Clifford Isles, a director of Isles, Love & Co, auctioneers. She married Max Allen in 1939; they had three children Sarah (Mrs Clive Lucas), Jocelyn and Nicholas, who donated a large collection of her prints to the National Gallery of Australia [NGA]. Joyce Allen, a friend of the printmaker Ailsa Allan , made her first linocuts in the late 1940s, e.g. The Pied Piper 1947, which was intended as an illustration to Robert Browning’s poem and hence never editioned. In the 1950s she attended classes given by Thea Proctor but only began working seriously on her prints in the early 1960s when her friend Ysobel Irvine introduced her to Willoughby Art Workshop and the teachings of Joy Ewart . There she met Elizabeth Rooney , under whose guidance she experimented with etching, although linocut remained her primary medium. Allen’s linocuts include Within a Week 1967 (Art Gallery of New South Wales, purchased by Hal Missingham from the exhibition Sydney Printmakers , Blaxland Galleries, 3 September 1967), The Pursuit of Trivia 1986, At the Gallery 1987 (private collection [p.c.]), Fury 1989, Death in the Dump 1989 (p.c.) and Muddle 1980s (every mother’s domestic situation). She always painted watercolour landscapes too.
Allen exhibited with the Australian Watercolour Institute and the Society of Artists in the late 1950s, with the Sydney Printmakers at Blaxland Galleries in the early 1960s and in Australian Print Council exhibitions in 1967, 1969 and 1971. She held solo exhibitions at the Willoughby Art Centre and with the Bowral and Berrima Art Societies. Her prints were included in the 1968 Bradford Print Biennale (UK) in 1968, with Baldessin , Ruth Faerber, Graham King, Elizabeth Rooney and Stephen Spurrier.
Allen and her husband moved to Bowral in 1970 where she taught briefly at the Heartfield School and continued to teach part time with the Bowral Art Society. A retrospective exhibition of her linocuts was held at Scheding Berry Gallery, Sydney in 1986 – the year a large collection of her works was acquired by the NGA (added to by her children in 1993 so that the gallery now has over 100 prints ranging from 'Backyard, Sydney’ 1947 and 'The giant pouring water’ and 'Title Page: The Lonely Giant’ 1948 to 'Diners’ and Still life in the dump 1991). She had a solo exhibition at australian [sic] Girls’ Own Gallery [aGOG], Canberra, in 1990 and her work was included in several group shows at this gallery. In 1991 she received the Visual Arts and Crafts Board of the Australia Council’s Emeritus Award but died suddenly at Bowral on 30 July 1992, just after a retrospective exhibition of her work had opened at Macquarie Galleries, Sydney. Helen Maxwell Galleries, Canberra (formerly aGOG) gave her another small solo show in June-July 2001.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1996
- Last updated:
- 2007
