Robert Lukens
speaker
541 appearances
4 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2018
last heard Sep 2021
Robert Lukens’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
And the other one that really stood out for me was Kathleen O'Connor of Paris by Amanda Curtin.
Amanda Curtin, the Western Australian writer.
She was, and I was thinking about that earlier.
It was interesting because I went to describe her as Western Australian author, but I don't know why I feel compelled to do that because I don't do that when I describe my Sydney or Melbourne writing friends, but it is interesting.
Yeah, and it's such a wonderful book, really, and book's the only word I can really come...
to describe it because it's part biography, part art history, part travel memoir, but really it's just great storytelling.
It's a story of Kathleen O'Connor, who was an Australian, I guess you'd call her an impressionistic artist, who left conservative Perth at the beginning of the 20th century and went to
to try and live out this bohemian Paris artist's life, which she did.
And she exhibited in Paris for five decades, I believe.
And it's also the story of Amanda Curtin, this almost detective story of tracing this elusive, mysterious character and her elusive relationships with other people, but also her relationship with Australia.
She had an almighty chip on her shoulder about Perth and about Australia.
And
Some of that comes from tragedy of her childhood where her father, who was a famous Western Australian engineer and town planner, there's beaches and statues named after.
And also he was Charles O'Connor, who was the subject of The Drowner by Robert Drew of his life.
That's C.Y.
O'Connor.
I didn't realise.
Yeah, and the tragedy of his tragic passing and the treatment of him by the Australian press and in Kathleen O'Connor's eyes by Australia left this shadow on Kathleen as part of the reason she wanted to go and later in life she had to sort of, with her tail between her legs, come back to Perth.
But it's just such a magical story of a life devoted to art and it's just a magical book.
Yeah, you'd think so, wouldn't you?
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