Shared Experience: Parachute Riggers
Paraskeva Clark
Parachute Riggers
oil on canvas
101.8 x 81.4cm
CWM 19710261-5679
Clark noted in a letter to the director of the National Gallery of Canada:
After having some personal experience with life and activities of the Women’s Divisions in the RCAF or Wrens, I lost all hope to see “any drama” there. But I found exciting enough the fact that in some of the activities, women performed the jobs, previously done by men and thus, released (perhaps) some men for fighting duties or for war industries.
In this painting, the intense expression on three of the women’s faces draws attention to their tasks of cutting, folding, and securing the lines of the parachutes they are making. Two diagonal workbenches dramatically split the composition into three parallel bands, in which their figures and arm movements create a dynamic zigzag across the surface.
Paintings
- Corvette Galley
Leonard Brooks - Glass-blowers 'Gathering' from the Furnace
Mervyn Peake - Parachute Riggers
Paraskeva Clark - Sections of buoyancy tank and floating caissons, Sydney graving dock
Herbert McClintock - No 1 projectile shop, (Commonwealth Ordnance Factory, Maribyrnong)
Sybil Craig - Working in the snow, Australian Forestry Unit, Scotland
Sheila Hawkins - Hull Riveting
Frederick B. Taylor - ATS at Work
Rodrigo Moynihan - The Camouflage Workshop, Leamington Spa, 1940
Edwin La Dell - The Merchant Navy: The chain-locker
Henry Carr - Private Roy, Canadian Women's Army Corps
Molly Lamb Bobak - Ruby Loftus screwing a Breech-ring
Dame Laura Knight - The billy boy
William Dobell - Transport driver (Aircraftwoman Florence Miles)
Nora Heysen - Weighing Down The Tail, New Brunswick
Moses Reinblatt - Patients waiting Outside a First Aid Post in a Factory
Ruskin Spear