The heavy impasto and dense surface texture of this portrait are Evert Ploeg’s artistic signature. At the time it was painted, Ploeg lived and worked in a converted barn, the ceiling of which was lined with jute wool bales. He recalls that he often wondered about painting on jute, but felt that he needed the right subject. Having seen Bidjara and Māori (Ngāti Porou and Te Arawa) actor and singer Deborah Mailman AM (b. 1972) accept an AFI award for her performance in Radiance (1998) with palpable warmth and sincerity, he invited her to sit for this portrait. Mailman was in her early twenties when she co-devised and appeared in the one-woman stage show Seven Stages of Grieving, which was later staged in London. She went on to perform in films such as Rabbit-Proof Fence, Bran Nue Dae and The Sapphires and the television series The Secret Life of Us, Offspring, Redfern Now, Cleverman and Total Control. Speaking about her portrait to the Sydney Morning Herald, Mailman said: ‘I feel he has brought to light a deeper, more contemplative side of myself.’
Purchased 2000
© Evert Ploeg/Copyright Agency, 2024
A larger than life portrait of Australian performer Deborah Mailman. 1.8m high x 1.5 wide An unframed canvas work suspended behind glass. The original work is recessed in a larger, dark wood frame. Deborah is seated on the ground, barefoot and cross legged. The canvas onto which she has been painted is repurposed wool-bale jute; coarse, careworn, stained and dimpled, perforated in places from use, it bears letters and numbers relative to its previous life.
In the top left, stencilled black letters DM, below it - CRT- adjacent to Deborah’s shoulder and almost halfway down the work, a nine digit batch number with a miniature map of Australia stamped in its centre. Continuing down, by her knee, the word WOOL upside down. In the bottom left corner Evert’s concertina-like signature. On the other side, above her knee also upside down CLASS 1A
The jute wall meets a similarly coloured floor.
Deborah sits with her arms behind her body, her weight resting on her bottom and her hands, torso straight, legs crossed.
Her dark curly hair is drawn away from her face, centre parted and a curl is escaping from behind her left ear. She isn’t wearing any jewellery. Deborah’s skin is golden brown. Her head is angled slightly, her right ear out of view. She has a high forehead, her brow offers the suggestion of a furrow rising from between dark, manicured eyebrows and dark eyes. An even, rounded, prominent nose above wide, full, red-painted lips. Her lush mouth is closed, the edges turned up leaving small, vertically angled creases where the corners of her mouth meet her otherwise creaseless cheeks. She is looking out, beyond us, her gaze unfocused.
She wears a long-sleeved kaftan, its collar rising to meet her rounded chin on her right, and sliding perilously close to falling off and down her left arm. An opalescent, rounded shoulder and the shadowed crevice of her collar bone bared to our gaze.
The robe’s deep V- neck hints at a braless cleavage, her lower body lost in the stiff folds of her white kaftan, its shade and texture contrasts dramatically; her smooth brown skin against the large, coarse, beige-and-tan jute squares behind.
Her right knee is exposed where the robe has been pushed back. The flesh of her thigh and shin are pressed together, the underside of her knee in shadow and the rest of her leg disappears into wild sea of material in her lap.
At her left bent knee, material falls a short distance to the floor and covers her shin, leaving only her left, arched foot exposed, toes relaxed.
It is a full-length kaftan, ending beyond her crossed legs, outlining her calf and shin in the material. On the floor in the bottom right, 7 letters, inclusive of S’s and N’s, it’s not clear what it says, letters splayed from her knee down her shin. At the bottom of the frame, on our left, the way light hits the tendons of her ankle gives the appearance of streak of golden body paint from her ankle to the bones of her foot.
Audio description written by Emma Bedford and Jody Holdback and voiced by Emma Bedford
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
An interview with artist Evert Ploeg about his portrait of the Australian actor Deborah Mailman.
Australian actress Deborah Mailman is the subject of a unique portrait by Evert Ploeg.
