painter, was born in Adelaide and has had a long and distinguished career in South Australia. She was educated at the Girls’ Central Art School, the SA School of Arts and Crafts (1934-37) and Adelaide Teachers’ College (1939-40). She taught at the School of Arts and Crafts in 1941-45, then resigned to work full time as an artist. Her most influential teachers were Mary P. Harris and John Goodchild (husband of Doreen ). She was also influenced by the professionalism of Dorrit Black , although not by Black’s style. In 1952 she married Frank Galazowski; they have four children.
Jacqueline Hick is primarily a figure painter in oils although she has also made prints, set designs and enamels. Her approach to media is to learn traditional methods thoroughly and then to experiment. In the early 1940s she, Thelma Fisher and Christine Miller learnt print-making from John Goodchild, then produced intaglio prints using unconventional methods. Although necessitated by a shortage of materials due to the war, this has become Jacqueline Hick’s method. In 1951 she took lessons in the use of oil glazes from Ivor Hele and subsequently used it almost in the manner of watercolour painting, particularly in her underwater bathers’ paintings of the 1970s.
Jacqueline Hick’s approach to subject matter and style is similar. She is conscious of working in the European tradition, which she studied in England, France and Italy (1948-50); she has been inspired by the work of Goya, Daumier, Kollwitz and, in Australia, Dobell and Drysdale. Her subject matter can be divided into two: a vein of social comment ranging from mild satire to trenchant criticism and more decorative work based on the Australian landscape and its fauna and flora. The former evokes wartime life in Adelaide, family life during the 1950s, the dispossession of the Australian Aborigines, the oppressive nature of the city, portraits of family and friends and the expression of her love of the performing arts. In her decorative work she enjoys the challenge of combining aesthetic needs and an awareness based on informed observation. Her hobbies are the study of geology and ornithology, and she has been a member of the Field Geology Club of South Australia and the Queensland Ornithology Society.
Throughout her career Jacqueline Hick has been active in arts organisations. She was a founder committee member of the Contemporary Art Society (SA), a founder member of the Adelaide Theatre Group, a member of the Royal SA Society of Arts, a Board member of the Art Gallery of SA (1968-75) and a member of the first Council of the Australian National Gallery (1982-85, now NGA).
Jacqueline Hick has mostly worked in Adelaide but lived in Brisbane in 1978-90. She now lives in retirement in Adelaide. She has won many awards for her painting, principally the Melrose Prize (1959) for her Self Portrait , the Cornell Prize (1958, 1960) and the Maude Vizard-Wholohan Prize (1962, 1964). In 1995 Hick was appointed Member of the Order of Australia, AM, for services to art.
- Writers:
- Furby, Paula
Note: Heritage biography.
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
