About Colin

In sourcing my appreciation of art, I have to thank my mother, Helen Smith (née Silman). Canadian by birth, Helen was, in the 1960s, an amateur painter of some ability. Her still-life paintings were especially good. But deciding that she’d never be as good as she wanted to be and wishing to learn more about art, in 1970 she became a voluntary guide at the National Gallery of Victoria. In the following decades, she led countless people through a multitude of gallery exhibitions, thoroughly researching each and every one of them prior to her tours. Later, when deemed too old to be a gallery guide, she guided at the Australian Tapestry Workshop in South Melbourne. 

Where Helen’s love for art came from, I don’t know. I think it was just in her. 

When I was young, probably pre-teens, Helen would take me and my two siblings to the National Gallery of Victoria to look at art. I suppose she thought it would be good for us. 

Later, as a teenager and into my early twenties, we would go to exhibitions. At these, she introduced me to many artists and their art. Four in particular come a to mind. I can remember her explaining the meaning of the red crescent lips in an Albert Tucker painting from his unforgettable Images of Modern Evil series. I recall her showing me the Lloyd Rees painting Australian Façade and marvelling at his work. I remember her introducing me to John Perceval’s Exodus from a Bombed City. This is a serious work of art in anyone’s language. And she took me to see the Jackson Pollock masterpiece Blue Poles when it first came to Melbourne. Not knowing who Jackson Pollock was, I loved what I saw, my first sensation being that it was ‘electric’. I enjoy all of his art, including his early work, despite the fact that it was borne of his deep unhappiness and personal insecurities. There can be a lot of pain in being a genius, and he knew it all. 

I feel extremely fortunate that Helen introduced me to many artists and their art in my formative years, but it is these four that have stayed with me.

Much later in life and into her eighties and early nineties, Helen and I were still attending exhibitions. I have a wonderful photograph of Helen leaning forward into an Arthur Boyd landscape at an exhibition of his work at Bunjil Place. Examining the work in as much detail as is the human eye possibly can, she was, in that moment, the only person at the exhibition and in her own world. It’s fantastic where art can take one.

My father, Philip Smith enjoyed the arts, but his real love was classical music, ballet and opera. I can appreciate these, but they don’t move me like the visual arts do.

The Books and the Boyds

After moving to Murrumbeena in 1983, I became involved in a local conservation issue. The Outer Circle reserve, the route of the old train line that had run from 1890 to 1895 between Oakleigh and Melbourne (via Darling or Fairfield) and included Murrumbeena, was proposed for rezoning to enable its subdivision. I became a member of the community group organized to resist that rezoning and see it maintained as public open space. I did some media for the group. Learning that the Boyd family had lived in Murrumbeena and near the reserve, I contacted Guy Boyd. He did some promotion of the issue, and ultimately, the land was saved from subdivision.

In the mid-1980s, a proposal was put forward to name the Murrumbeena section of the old railway line, Boyd Park. I was asked to join a group formed by the Caulfield Council to assist in the creation a submission to the Victorian Place Names Committee to further this cause. I was asked to speak to local people to ascertain whether the Boyds were remembered in the area or not, this being an important factor in the success or otherwise of the naming. I began carrying out interviews with local residents who had known the Boyds. The transcripts of those interviews became part of the submission which saw the Murrumbeena section of the old line become Boyd Park.

I was left with transcripts of the interesting conversations I’d had with Murrumbeena residents, and decided to keep on locating people who had known the Boyds, and recording their stories. This was with the notion of including them into a book about the Boyd family and Murrumbeena. Between 1988 and 2005 I did around 50 interviews with Boyd family members and with people who had known the family. The transcripts of those became the bulk of Merric Boyd and Murrumbeena: The Life of an Artist in a Time and a Place, published in 2013 and then again in 2014. The book also included a history of Murrumbeena, and of Merric Boyd and his family. It was sold locally, principally through Attwood’s Newsagency in Neerim Road, but also through bookshops across Melbourne. Reading’s Malvern store was an excellent outlet for the book and has been for others I have written.

Through this project, I came to know Merric Boyd’s grandson, Robert Beck and his wife, Margot. And through them, I met Merric’s eldest child, ceramic decorator and painter, Lucy Boyd. Born in 1916, she had married the potter, Hatton Beck in 1939 and become Lucy Boyd Beck. Their interviews are in Merric Boyd and Murrumbeena. As there was no book dedicated to Lucy and her life in art with Hatton, I researched and wrote Lucy Boyd Beck: Life and Art. This was published in 2020.

Through my reading and research about Merric Boyd, I became increasingly aware of his brother, the painter, Penleigh Boyd who was killed in a car accident near Warragul in 1923, aged 33 years. In my reading, he was there and then he was gone and gone so very suddenly, leaving an extraordinary body of art. There was just one book published about Penleigh and his art prior to his death, but none published since. Consequently, I researched and wrote Sunlight and Storm: The Life and Art of Penleigh Boyd. This was published in 2021.

Having spent a lot of time and money publishing books, and not getting any younger, I decided to call it a day on books. I also decided to go out with a bang and do one last book. I always had the title, A Murrumbeena Scrapbook in mind. My idea was to bring much of what I had learnt about Murrumbeena together, including the best photographs I had collected, into a book. This would be accompanied with excerpts from Merric Boyd and Murrumbeena. The book was published in early 2025.

Often, a book starts as the itch of an idea. Having decided that I’m finished with books, I’m now thinking there might be one more left in me. I have long felt some of the brilliant drawings of Merric Boyd would do well in a book. There are books on his drawings already, some of which are reproduced in black and white, but I have my own ideas on how such a book could look. Watch this space.

My first three books are now distributed by Peribo. A Murrumbeena Scrapbook is a book I am distributing myself, principally through outlets in Murrumbeena and Carnegie.

As well as writing books, I give talks about the people and places I write about. These include to art gallery members, historical societies, painting groups, collectors' groups, men's sheds, U3A and library groups, and at writers' events and the like. I also undertake walking tours of Murrumbeena, many to the forementioned groups, indicating both its history as a suburb and its place as a centre of art and creativity.