Cicada Singing – No. 23 of 60 (1978) – “Earth Hold Suite” – ON SALE / 25% OFF

In April 2023 Australia lost one of its greatest artists, the incredible John Olsen AO, OBE. Olsen was one of Australia’s most awarded and prestigious artists, and it’s a true pleasure to have one of his beautiful etchings at the Studio.

In his typically spontaneous style that was full of shapes, squiggles and dots, and displaying his love of Australian landscape and fauna, Olsen’s passions shine through in this beautiful etching created in rich sepia tones, “Cicada Singing” from 1978.

“Cicada Singing” shows Olsen’s free-flowing and joyous use of line and his curiosity for nature. Interestingly, this etching also features as an illustration in the rare book of poetry “Earth Hold” by Australian poet, Jennifer Rankin. Published in 1978, “Earth Hold” features images of several of Olsen’s etchings mostly portraying Australian wildlife and landscapes, as illustrations to Rankin’s poems. Rankin once remarked: “I’ve always enjoyed details and I’ve always enjoyed animals and insects and drawing and botany”. Rankin’s and Olsen’s subjects and interests were perfectly aligned!   

To follow is an excerpt from the poem “Cicada Singing” that appears in Rankin’s “Earth Hold” book:

A bird is chasing the cicada!

I see them skim over the thin grass

 into the trees.

 And last night cicada they nearly had you,

my skinny son and his friend,

shimmying up gumtrees in the cool dark street

coming home tired and unsuccessful.

Shall I tell them tonight

you are in my tree?

 With your life expectancy

six days in the sun

eight years in the earth

and the long slow crawl behind you?

 Shall I tell them tonight?

 Ah! But the probing beak of the bird

prises you out!

Quick in the swift air

it is the urgent flap of bird-wind

 and you glint green my cicada

in this instant-wheeling garden

you glint green

under the weight of the bird

 you glint green and the sun shines

catching itself on your newly-dried wings

that tear like a child’s first transfer in the air.