The paintings in Time and Tide — The Story in Pictures of Roebuck Bay N.W Australia Elizabeth Durack's first exhibition, were produced over an eight month period (October 1945—May 1946) when the artist was based in Broome, Western Australia. In some 100 works she created paintings from direct observation, imagination and research that reflect the pearling town's past and present.
Later she recalled: " ... the war was ended. A tiny town, along with great cities and vast tracts of land, lay in waste. It had been bombed, evacuated and neglected, yet there — in that remote corner of the world ... people were living and new life emerging, almost as though nothing had happened ... Take Broome Madonna ... this woman seemed to epitomise [the times] ... I made pencil drawings and painted from them ... she sat very still, was not interested in what I was doing and did not even want to see the finished work. She was indifferent, impassive, serene. Life was going on and she was its vessel yet she was removed from it too, as art is removed from life and yet is its mainspring ... I was going to call this painting 'Post War Reconstruction' ..."
In style, essence and subject matter the works in Time and Tide are very different from anything produced by the well-documented contemporary modernists or by those working within traditional schools of Australian art.
They reveal an artist independent from the mainstream and popular trends; an artist seeking to interpret and reach an understanding of a distinctively Australian experience.
Time and Tide’s accent on the far past, its broad narrative and contemporary social comment set a pattern for much of the work that was to follow.
