The Making Of An Australian Artist

Alex Miller(1936-)is one of the most distinguished living Australian novelists.He is a prolific novelist,having written twelve novels and a collection of short stories.In his novels,he shows his concern about social issues such as migration,war and racial conflicts.Besides,he also pays attention to other themes,for example,art,writing,friendship and death.This thesis aims to study Miller's three novels,namely,The Sitters(1995),Prochownik's Dream(2005),and Autumn Laing(2011).In this thesis,the three novels will be interpreted from the perspective of postcolonialism to reveal how white Australian artists reconstruct their identity by achieving a balance between the influences of two cultures—that of the native country and the home country.This thesis is divided into five parts.Chapter One contains a brief introduction to the author,his works and relevant studies.Postcolonial studies and the layout of the thesis will also be included in this chapter.Chapter Two is mainly about the interpretation of The Sitters.In this chapter,a first-generation Australian artist at first suffers from the artistic predicament due to his refusal to paint his family and childhood in the home country,and finally reconstructs his identity through reexamining the past.In Chapter Three,Prochownik's Dream is explored.The novel is mainly about the growth of a second-generation Australian artist Toni who handles the identity crisis brought by the death of his father,who is also the representative of the home culture,and reconstructs his identity by painting back from the margin and mimicking the home culture in the end.In Chapter Four,Autumn Laing is analyzed in order to explore the growth of a sixth-generation artist who freely creates Australian art based on the new land and brings Australian art to the world.He finally becomes a free artist.Chapter Five is a conclusion in which the growth of the three white Australian artists will be summarized in the process of expunging the embarrassments of the colonial past.This thesis argues that Miller intends to deploy three artists' growth to demonstrate that in order to overcome the predicaments in the artistic creation,white Australian artists have to achieve a balance between the present and the past,and it is essential to be rooted in the native culture in order to bring Australian art to the world.The growth of artists reveals that Australian cultural cringe has been gradually replaced by cultural confidence.Miller thus challenges the commonplace assumptions of Australian culture.