My Artistic Journey

A personal telling.

I had always loved painting and drawing at school, but received no outside encouragement.

My desire and need for art surfaced much later, out of a deep and long-standing depression (almost a complete breakdown) when the feeling came to me for art (about which I knew very little) and with it a conviction that I had to do it from myself, not what someone had taught me.

I was so fortunate to meet Brian Hatch, a Brisbane painter and printmaker who held very informal art workshops. I am eternally grateful that I found him at this critical stage of my life - he opened up to me ‘ways of seeing’ (or even not seeing, but feeling) and of ‘letting be’ a painting, a knowledge that has stayed with me ever since of when a painting has finished itself. He did not teach, or touch my work, but encouraged me to find out for myself, to trust in my innate instincts. I was then in my mid thirties and the last of our four children had just commenced school.

The earliest works were abstract – mostly shape and form, and definitely colour - even when depressed I would paint happy bright works, often inspired by organic forms and strange animal shapes. I painted mostly in acrylic on hardboard and also experimented with printing techniques on both paper and fabric.

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