Inducted in 2011 for services to: Arts and media.
Born: 1934 {asset_metadata_roll.birth.in.on} Hobart, Tasmania
Beatrice (Bea) Maddock was educated in Hobart and later studied art at the Hobart Technical College and Slade College of Art in London.
Bea travelled extensively throughout Europe, returning to Tasmania before taking up a position as printmaking lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts from 1970. Following this she was Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University in Canberra in 1976. Bea then worked and lived in Mt Macedon until the Ash Wednesday fires of 1983 where her studio, house and artwork were destroyed by fire. She then returned to Tasmania as the Head of the School of Art in Launceston.
Throughout her career, Bea has experimented with sculpture, photography and drawing, but is best known as one of Australia’s finest printmakers exploring the natural environment, Aboriginal Australia and Australian history. Her body of work is an inspiration to emerging artists, especially printmakers.
Bea rose to prominence for her multi-panelled landscape paintings, inspired by a visit to Antarctica and the coastline of Tasmania. The latter, Terra Spiritus has been described as a ‘complex, mystical work…a profound and symbolic statement about co-existence’.
Bea has held over thirty solo exhibitions in Australia and participated in over 60 group exhibitions both nationally and internationally. She has won numerous prizes and her work is represented in all major galleries in Australia including the National Gallery of Australia. Her work is also shown at the National Gallery in Washington and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1991, Bea was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia for her services to art and art education.
Today, Bea divides her time between studios in Oatlands and Launceston, and is widely considered one of Australia’s finest artists.