Liz Ashburn was born in Paddington just before the outbreak of World War II, a time when the suburb was very much an enclave of the working class. She first attended Paddington Public School before being transferred to the Opportunity Class at Woollahra, and then Sydney Girl’s High.
She had always loved drawing, so left school at the minimal leaving age to enrol at the neighbouring East Sydney Technical College (later renamed the National Art School) where she focused on sculpture, where she was taught by Henry Moore. There was at the time a shortage of high school art teachers in NSW and the Education Department was less concerned with formal teaching qualifications, so her introduction to teaching was as a casual relief school teacher.
On graduating from the National Art School she was appointed as a teacher in sculpture, initially part-time but by 1971 she was teaching full time.Over the next three decades she became one of the constants in tertiary art education, as the National Art School morphed into the Alexander Mackie College of Advanced Education, the City Art Institute and finally the College of Fine Arts, UNSW. In order to meet the challenges of the changing landscape of art education she undertook further studies at the University of Sydney, Macquarie University and UNSW. The overwhelming majority of the teaching staff at Alexander Mackie were men, many of whom did not accept women could be artists. She became the main advocate for women staff and students, working to redress the gender imbalance in the visual arts.
By the time she started to exhibit her own art in 1987, the organic Henry Moore influenced works from her student years had morphed into mixed media installations. She was especially concerned with the deteriorating environment and used her art as a tool for advocacy.
There was also a political element to her art – she was one of the activist artists included in the Tin Shed’s Towers of Torture in 1988. But after the western powers descended on Iraq in 2003 she turned her attention to conflict and its consequences. Her interest in different traditions of art led her to study miniature painting with A. Karim Rahimi who was at the time teaching short courses at the College of Fine Arts. They subsequently exhibited together at Cross Arts Projects.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2023
