Her Painter's Prose

I bring up Dorothy the painter because many of the descriptions in her novels and stories—of nature, people and animals—read like paintings. Check out the art work in the previous section and compare it with the following passages. Dabs of color, hues, light, shadows, outlines, perspective--the handiwork of the visual artist is everywhere evident in her prose. (For full references, see “Reference Key”)

“Yellow, yellow, yellow, a great shout of color between the hard blue sky and the red dust.” (Gold, p. 19)

“The little snowy flower that comes out snowy white and then gradually changes through all shades of pink to the deepest ruby red. And the water took enticing turns around large red stones, on which the blue and scarlet dragon flies sunned, and was bordered by the softest toe tickliest ribbon of purple-reeded couch grass, while the refracted sunlight made changing amber patters on the red gravel bottom.” (Gold, p. 34)

”Eight hundred feet below me the mists were just breaking up from the purple valley floors; shreds of finely ascending gold and tendernest pink, quivering, stirring banks of silver, parting to reveal deep blue and purple of fathomless shadow; ruby touching the peaked wall of the northern mountains; and to the east the hill-waves running on an on to meet the sun. A great noiseless drama of colour.” (Gold, p. 71)

”There were clear green shallows blotched with purple, and reefs smeared in herring and pink, ad a sea of glasslike silver. And a little chalk-white beach, that at its northern end was pressed and overlapped by the glistening jungle, brilliant, living enameled with sunlight. (Gold, p.166)

”Sunlight flickered through the grey-blue, pointed gum leaves, and patterned the white satin of the new bark, and the reflected sun flashed up under surfaces of the gum trunks and branches. The faint new greens of the herbage and the yellow water through which the sun rays sank were all very lovely; but there was nothing to be seen as lovely as Georgina herself, fishing for yabbies on the old dull-red rock!” (Battle, p. 20)

”As he rode, the sunlight left the earth, and a faint gray-purple bloom veiled its red, while, as though for compensation, the treetops caught a stronger glow of the west. Then they too faded and grew dark against the wine-red sky.” (Battle p. 41).

”Then the grey shadow swallowed up the world, while the water among the pale grass clumps became blood-red, and the overarching sky and amber-wine that deepened to rub-fire along the west . and then the swams came, their dark plumage crimsomed by the last light, and then, as they dropped through the shadow-line, turning to velvet black against the south sky, where far-away purple clouds were banking. (Battle, p. 66)

“The big moon poked up through the dead trees at the head of the backwash of Tom Henton’s Dam; its golden face reflected in the still waters. The moon was immense, dramatic, and as it rose the landscape took on pale colors, grey and silver, lilac and faint green; a splendid, silver shining that paled the stars. (Orphan, p. 9)

“The sunset was at incredible distance, holding a wild quality of withdrawal, as if the light of the world seen for the last time.” (‘Hurricane, North Atlantic’)

”The heat was suddenly too great, the sun too bright and near. The normal Caribbean sky of violent blue, with clouds so low that they seemed to brush the masts of ships, lifted suddenly to a sky of high, neat cirrus that blazed like a forge at sunset.” (Ibid)

”Morning in the secret channel was a thing of Elfin green and gray and lilac, jeweled with the ruby colors that touched the fallen and floating mangrove leaves that made the only sharp distinctions between the worlds of air and water.” (‘My Love Will Come’)

”The last of evening was on the channel marker and slashed as amber search-lights between the intertwined keys [small islands], so that where the keys caught the level light they seemed fashioned of burnished metal, and where the keys were in shadows the mangrove leaves reflected the second-hand gold of the domed storm clouds. The stillness was terrific.” (Ibid)

”Then the moon topped the swamps, so vast and golden bright that it seemed to melt a part of the horizon, and its face appeared round before it was fully above the world.” (Ibid)

”Even the great swells were crimsomed through their clearness, in which one saw the darting shadow of fish against the light.”(‘Hurricane Wedding’)

”And at first the grassy banks of the stream were open and trailed with maidenhair ferns on the rocks and tree trunks. Then the pink-fruited figs pressed closer and tree ferns made a roof of pale green fronds, and then the great tree trunks pressed in so that the stream was a winding aisle through a cathedral.” (‘The Pit in the Jungle’)

”Especially the birds that were like sparks of snow and white flowers, and yet somehow like wicked and merry gnomes bead-eyed expressive—crested, companionable yet unknowable. (Ibid)

Colorful scenery alone, however, does not necessarily translate into good literature. Fiction writers there are many who can paint beautiful pictures with words, but what few can do convincingly is blend the pictures with the other parts of their stories--characters, plot, theme, settings, narrative--so that it all comes across to the reader as one harmonious whole. I have just read, for example, a short stories by a 19th writer whose bucolic images of nature could stand alone as poems yet have nothing at all to do with the rest of the story. Perhaps because this writer was a life-long city dweller from a well-to-do family, who never experienced nature in the raw, her out-of-context images are like obtrusive obstacles that only force readers to skip over them so they can get on with the story. Such is not the case with Dorothy Cottrell. She not only experienced the full picture of the Australian Outback and the Caribbean first hand, and in a wheelchair no less, but she also knew how to paint it with brush and with words. Her imagery, her characters and all else in her story are one. The reader cannot skim over any of the parts without missing the whole story. That level of writing takes more than mere skill. It takes genius.