Illuminating the spiritual : the symbolic art of Christian Waller

Abstract

Australian artist Christian Waller nee Yandell (1894-1954) created artworks that unified her aesthetic and spiritual values. The technical and expressive brilliance of her work across a range of art media - drawing, painting, illustration, printmaking, stained glass and mosaic - makes it worthy of focused scholarly attention. Important influences on her practice included Pre-Raphaelitism, Art Deco and the Celtic Revival. Her spirituality was informed by a range of orthodox and alternative systems of belief, including: Christianity, Theosophy, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the international Peace Mission Movement. Acting as an emissary, she included personal symbols - especially the sun, the moon, stars and flowers - in her artworks to encourage spiritual contemplation. In this thesis, I argue that Waller harnessed the decorative and expressive potential of these movements - along with a commitment to Arts and Crafts values - to develop a personal set of symbols that expressed her sense of the spiritual. This encompassed the harmony of word, image and message, which underscored her work. It is for this reason that I locate Waller within the international discourse of spiritual art. Despite her remarkable talents across media and the distinctive quality of her art, Waller has always occupied a peripheral position within Australian art and art history. Even when she is included in significant books and exhibitions, most often it is in relation to her hand-printed book 'The Great Breath: A Book of Seven Designs' (1932) and her relationship with her husband, fellow artist Napier Waller. Key aims of this thesis are to highlight the breadth and depth of Waller's art practice and to demonstrate that she made important contributions to Australian art and to art that addresses the sacred.This thesis introduces a number of Waller's artworks, stories and personal ephemera into scholarship, making a comprehensive study of the artist possible for the first time. It makes a major contribution to scholarship on the artist, especially in relation to the spiritual values that underpinned her practice, as expressed in the key symbols that are identified. By extension, it contributes a more nuanced understanding of art produced between the First and Second World Wars to Australian art history and to scholarship on art that addresses the sacred.