SWEETER THAN HONEY
A mad jubilant song of praise to life in an era of sadness. It contains spiritual images and Biblical references that resonate. It celebrates the Middle East and the confluence of religions. Joyful images of licking honey from the rock.
Heather Ellyard is a hybrid artist-poet, born in Boston USA where she later studied literature and education at Simmons University. She migrated to Australia in 1970, subsequently spent three years in PNG, and then returned to Australia, living in Canberra, Adelaide and Melbourne. She currently lives on a remote property in Central Victoria.
More and more, words are her paint. Her installations cover the walls with poems. She says: it isn't about paint anymore. I am looking now for still points and lines that are journeys and blackboards for remembering hard poems and jars and generic dolls for holding sorrows, ambiguities and fragments of hope.
Ellyard has held 30 solo exhibitions and has been represented in more than 50 group shows including Paris and Beijing. Her work is in private collections here and abroad and in public collections including the National Gallery of Australia, the Commonwealth Parliament House Collection, the Art Gallery of South Australia, the Jewish Museum of Australia, the University of SA, the University of Canberra and Monash University Medical Centre.
Ellyard has written of art publications since 1985. Her most recent long poem was published in Constellations Volume 7, a Journal of Poetry and Fiction USA.