Long Live the Green Man - the story of a bronze

Image: Nicole Murray

I have made a portrait of my beloved late husband, John Thompson, as The Green Man. The notion of the Green Man was dear to John, he wrote a song of the same name, which is much sung round the world. He described the foliate head of the green man as a 900 year artistic fad in churches across Europe, and as the positive representation of creative and spiritual masculinity, the keeper of the turning seasons, the spirit of the forest.

Listen to John and Nicole singing The Green Man here.

The sculpture is on show at Sculpture on the Edge, at Flaxton Gardens in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, from 23 November - 1 December 2024. I mounted the bronze on a beautiful slab of Norfolk pine, and warmly thank Joe and Ricky Lynch for their support and help, especially with sourcing materials and welding.

Image: Brian Ellwood

The Story of John's Green Man

In late 2020, not long before John died, I asked him if he would like me to make a bronze of him as the Green Man to place on his grave. He had bought a plot at Toowong Cemetery.

He was keen. I said I would like to make a very quick face cast using plaster bandage, to give me a rough idea of his proportions, on a day when he was feeling well enough, and he said, today I feel well enough. He was patient and very interested in the process.

Making the sculpture after his death has been a long and very challenging project. It has involved two years of work: relearning sculpture techniques, taking my skills to a professional level, struggling with design decisions, talking to John as I worked, and travelling to Melbourne several times from Queensland. I acknowledge with enormous gratitude the help, advice and moral support I received from my Kneen Street family in Melbourne, Peter Corlett, Louise Skacej and Dean Colls. 

It took the first year to make the work itself. Long, long days first in Peter's studio, then in mine. The weather got cold and I confess most of the work happened on the kitchen bench, where it was warmer. I will forever find tiny fragments of green wax in the kitchen. Then came the phase of silicone mould-making, then the creation of two waxes, each of which had to be hand finished to perfect the details. They were cast in bronze at Meridian Sculpture in Melbourne, by the wonderfully skilled team of artisans whose work is truly beautiful.

Once I had the bronzes finished and had driven them home to Queensland, I laboured over the design of the stone on which the bronze would sit. Every step of the process required me to journey through memories to understand how to express the essence of John's nature. Eventually I realised that for a man with an exquisite tenor voice who had spent his life singing folk music, and who chose after his diagnosis to make a journey to The Hill of Tara and Newgrange in Ireland, and who was a polymath with boundless interest in the world and a great love of celtic cultures, a grouping of standing stones was the right choice.

I worked with Queensland Heritage Masonry to find the stones and bring the monument to fruition. We had quite an adventure, going boulder hunting in Ferny Grove, and Dan and Aloysius calmly listened to my instructions and hopes, and honed, rebated and sandblasted to create the repository for the bronze.

 The stones are Keperra red granite, local to John's home in Brisbane. The leaves I have used in the sculpture include many symbolic choices from places he lived and knew: Ashgrove rainforest leaves, traditional green man oak leaves from Canberra and Melbourne, pak choy, hops, ferns, mango, eucalypt, ivy.

This is my gift to him, to commemorate a sparkling, witty, musical, political, precious man who was the cleverest person I ever met.

The Green Man
John Thompson

The Green Man's a traveller, a reveller, unraveller
Of dreams and of fancies, from first to the last.
Older than all men, living in all things
Son, father and sage,
Long live the Green Man!

First light of first morning saw the Green Man there waiting
He saw the creation and joined in the dance
All creatures grew 'round him, he grew with them singing
The first song of all, sing of the Green Man

Quietly watching and waiting and learning
The storms are his fury, the lightning his laugh
The first leaf of spring, his beauty and glory
His stillness his power, in the trees is his path.

There are fewer trees now, but the man is not sleeping
'Though our ruin brings sorrow to time's oldest heart
In our souls we may find him and remember his wisdom
And rekindle the flame; once again make a start.