Ken Searle : North Geelong. 21 January – 19 February, 1995, Geelong Art Gallery : 23 February – 16 March 1995, Charles Nodrum Gallery. (Inscribed by the artist for Lady Maisie Drysdale)

Folding card, 255 x 205 mm; front with colour reproduction of Searle’s painting North Geelong, second side with exhibition information, and inscribed by the artist in pen ‘To Maisie, Happy Xmas. Best wishes, Ken’; third side with detailed analysis of North Geelong by John Forbes; fourth side with Searle’s exhibition CV; good condition; [TOGETHER WITH] an accompanying “Christmas” letter by Nadia Wheatley (Searle’s literary collaborator) to Lady Maisie Drysdale. Typed letter, signed, 2 pp. quarto, headed Apollo Bay, 13 December 1994; the writer thanks Maisie for a copy of Night Fall in the Ti-tree, discusses Australian women writers of the 50s and 60s and also children’s writers and illustrators Paul Jennings, Terry Denton and Jane Tanner, and mentions that Ken ‘has the Geelong show all framed and ready, and is getting back to the Greek myths which he is doing for Watters in May. His main problem seems to be the local population shortage – not enough people to model as Greek gods and goddesses! I recently had to be Medusa – with my head already slashed off, thank heavens, so no one will recognise me. Perseus is Mick the plumber, from across the road’.