GI jeeps, New Guinea

Between 1944-45, Haxton was director, stage manager and scene painter for a small theatre company deployed to New Guinea to entertain the troops. Here Haxton depicts three jeeps driving down a coastal road in Manua, with a boat featured in the bay. Stylistically, the work reveals a myriad of influences that betray her background. She spent the '30s in London working as a commercial artist and exhibiting her oil paintings. The threat of war saw her make her way back to Australia via the US and Mexico, where she found inspiration in the elaborately decorated architecture. Back in Australia, she befriended the Drysdales. When they moved to Albury in 1941 she often shared a studio nearby, together with Donald Friend. Haxton continued to exhibit her work in Sydney and began painting murals, one of which won her the Sulman Prize in 1943 (for Le Coq D'Or restaurant).