Bean’s work is personal. Her father, William George Morton, service number 62433, served in the Royal Australian Air Force in WW2. Her stepfather, Brian Henry Holt, served in New Guinea in the same war. Both have long passed, leaving her mother (deceased) a war widow. Lest we forget the grief. Bean has concentrated the theme of her major paintings on the Unknown Warrior, inspired by the bas relief sculpture guarding the Monument to the Unknown Warrior in Syntagma Square, Athens. Bean’s largest oil painting to date, Our beloved Son (the Unknown Warrior), is an unidentified soldier positioned on a bed of spent rifle cartridges surrounded by a laurel wreath. 

For Catafalque (battle of Crete), Bean’s unknown warrior lays on a catafalque, or bier, shrouded with a parachute that signifies the devastating German invasion of Crete by air. The iron oxide coloured background, favoured by the ancient Greeks, was seen by Bean in frescos at Knossos, Crete. The artwork includes WW2 medals from Greece, a German commemorative medal for the battle of Crete, and the Maltese military hat badge. The small detailed watercolour paintings are mounted on hand-made paper from North Macedonia, dampened and pressed into the shape of the ancient stones of the fort in Chania Harbour. 

A series of oil paintings show medals superimposed over muted landscapes of Greece and Crete where battles were fought including Skafia, Maleme, Vale of Tempe and Mount Olympus. Bean was inspired by the antiquities buried within The Great Tumulus, Vergina, and in particular, the golden myrtle wreath of Philip II’s wife. In response, Bean has created a wreath made of copper and spent artillery shells with motifs of myrtle and bay leaves. Myrtle, a symbol of love, and bay leaves (laurel) symbolic of victory, immortality and remembrance.

 Watercolour applied to paper or vellum with a fine-pointed sable brush are traditional materials Bean uses to illustrate the complexities of the botanical world. She spent seven years researching Australia’s mangrove species for which she was awarded a PhD from the University of Newcastle. Deirdre has broadened her subject matter to include military paraphernalia after artists’ trips to Gallipoli and the Western Front. Since 2020, Deirdre has been working with oil paint, a medium she has returned to after many years. Since then, she has been a finalist in the Muswellbrook Art Prize, the Calleen Art Award and the Portia Geach Memorial Award for portraiture. In 2022, she was the winner of the Gallipoli Art Prize.

Her work is held in major collections including the Hunt Institute of Botanical Documentation, Pittsburgh, USA: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, London: The Shirley Sherwood Collection, Oxford, UK: Parliament House, Canberra: Australia Post: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney: Gallipoli Club, Sydney.

Portrait photograph of Deirdre Bean, Hill End, NSW. Courtesy of Riste Andrievski.