Dear Sun

by Janine Burke

Correspondence between Joy Hester and Sunday Reed.

Love's intention and the reverse of love's inention slowly mark my life...and on the banks of these dark rivers we become - become what we are to each other and become what we are to ourselves. Sunday Reed

I am so conscious of my own limitations that I'm afraid I'll never do the things I dream of - but always I think of you and wonder what you'd think...And how you have always given me so much pleasure because you bothered to follow what my silly dreams were... Joy Hester

Joy Hester was the only woman member of Angry penguins, Melbourne's radical art coterie of the war years, and the wife of Albert Tucker. Sunday Reed was her closest friend, a wealthy, charismatic patron of the arts. Their correspondence follows the ebb and flow of their creativity, struggles with illness and poverty, losses and gains in love, and their heated intellectual and artistic debates.

Friends and loved ones cross the pages of their letters, among them, Albert Tucker, Max Harris, Sidney Nolan, Barrett Reid, John Percival and the Boyds. Dear Sun is both the intimate portrait of a friendship between two extraordinary women and a fascinating insight into a remarkable period in Australian art.

276 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 28, 2011

About the author

Dr. Janine Burke is an art historian and biographer, and has written eight books of fiction and art history. She has degrees from the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. She was a lecturer in art history until she resigned from her job to become a full-time writer, which she has been for the last ten years.

Her books include Australian Women Artists, 1840-1940, Second Sight, which won the 1987 Victorian Premier's Award for Fiction, and Company of Images, which was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year award and the Miles Franklin Award. Her novel for teenagers, Journey to Bright Water, is published by Mammoth. She also contributed to Libby Hawthorn's anthology of short stories, The Blue Dress.

Janine has curated exhibitions of historical and contemporary art, and currently holds a research fellowship at Monash University. She lives in Melbourne, where she regularly reviews, lectures and broadcasts on radio.

Reviews

[Stephanie Shepherd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a collection of letters between two Australian women in the 1940s - 1950s. The way it is set out is really good and makes it easy to read and you can tell the author/editor was really passionate with the project and is very knowledgeable and has done a huge amount of research to create this book.

I went in blind on this book and learned a lot:

The way of keeping in contact with you friends by letter writing as frequently of a couple of times a week, and this era seems not so far away, really makes you think, because you are saying a lot more then the constant frivolous texts that we use today, so it feels like a deeper connection which felt beautiful.

The art scene of Melbourne in this time I knew nothing about, and when you look up who the real life characters are in this book, and their art, it was quite shocking to see how dark and abstract they were, something I never associated with this era of time.

I wonder why I have never heard of these artists during my education, I did art until year 11… I wonder if the Victorian curriculum includes them.

[T · Rating 5 out of 5]

Revealing. Intense. A must-read for admirers of Hester/her work.