10 Much of this work is now in the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. So too – sadly boarded up and obscured from public appreciation – is Freedman’s first huge mural, for the Aircraft Hall, depicting like a vast flock of birds ‘every aircraft used in the defence of the country’. This detailed project was undertaken years later, in 1969–70, the artist’s knowledge of planes and aviators still shining through. Freedman’s war art is strong, varied, authentic, sometimes romantic, human. The post-war art world lurched to modernism and the abstract, some say as a response to the horrors of war. Freedman’s artistic preference was for realism and form. He consciously turned to the general public as his audience while always embracing the label ‘artist’ himself. In his long, multifaceted post-war career he was conspicuous as book illustrator, innovative printmaker, influential art teacher, large-scale muralist and enthusiastic communicator. Among Harold Freedman’s most popular works, and displayed for years at railway stations around the state – the art gallery he loved best – were his vivid sequence of portrait posters commissioned in 1947 by Victoria Railways: ‘Men of Service’ including ‘Women of Service: The Porter’. There was a direct wartime link, as the Railways sought to celebrate its workers, too often unsung heroes, who had kept the train network running in difficult times. War service and heroism, as Harold Freedman had learned, took many forms. Andrew Lemon was writer and researcher for Harold Freedman and the Melbourne Mural Studio for ‘The History of Racing’ Mural from 1983 to 1989. Scenes from the mural are key illustrations for his three volume The History of Australian Thoroughbred Racing (1987, 1990, 2008) which grew from the mural project. Men and Women of Service – Images courtesy of the Art Gallery of Ballarat War sketches – Image courtesy of the State Library of Victoria
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