the story of victoria's regional art galleries
art for the country
art for the country is the story of Victoria's regional art Galleries
“My amateur ‘career’ in painting, and certainly my interest in art history, began as a child in Penguin, Tasmania. We had an apartment attached to an aged care home, where one resident was an old eccentric (red beret, bare feet, locks and belts on his door to keep out wandering aged care patients) man whose studio/room was filled with paintings, pastels, of outstanding quality. Charles E Ritchie took a liking to me, as I would sit and watch him paint, asking questions and showing a real interest. He would praise my childish attempts (like a painting of ‘bird rock in the moonlight’ I was very proud of) and encouraged me to keep on painting and drawing. When my Dad was killed in a timber accident (1946, when I was ten) he paid off my mother’s rent and gave me a 10 shilling note to be kept for my future education. Many years later, when I started writing my ‘Art for the Country’ book, I discovered that he was one of the famous Australian Impressionist School, a friend of Tom Roberts, Streeton, et al and had been with them in London at their first o’seas exhibition. But when he died (years after we left Tasmania) his family had no idea how famous he was and dumped all the artworks from his studio in the local tip. I was horrified. Some of his works (mainly pastel portraits) still hang in galleries such as Launceston.
the fairies of plant street
“I took up watercolours to illustrate the kids’ book Tricia had written for our grandchildren Emily & Ace. She said I should do the book illustrations and I said I couldn’t, but it was a challenge I took up while undergoing chemotherapy treatment for lymphoma. The idea came from Emily’s letters to the tooth fairy (and replies written by her mother) pegged to a special stick in their Plant St garden. When they had to move out to another rental property, Emily was worried the fairies would not know about her last teeth (likely to fall out while on holiday), so the ruse was kept up via a map showing our Anglesea house.
The more I drew and painted the better I became with using watercolours and it was this book that brought me back to active painting. I did not like the standard images of fairies, but as Tricia’s story ended up with the idea that fairies are everywhere in nature, I drew grubs, butterflies etc as fairies, and even used the wood knots in our A’sea house walls to depict fairies hiding in natural things (see fence palings in painting).”
big fat porkies and little white lies
“My youngest grandson Ace asked me to teach him how to use watercolours. Every Tuesday I would pick up him and his sister Emily up after school and sit with Ace doing colour washes, drawing, trying various brush and colour techniques.
Patricia suggested he might do better with a specific ‘project’ to focus on, and wrote another kids’ story book called ‘Big fat porkies and little white lies’, based on fibs she had told as a child and others our grandkids had told.
The central character was ‘Tim’ and his baby sister, so I asked Ace ‘What do you think Tim should look like?’ and he quickly drew and brushed in the figure on the book’s cover. Then, over several weeks, we tackled how to illustrate the various ‘fibs’ and ‘porkies’ Tim told –putting his finger into the icing on a cake and blaming the baby; wanting to outshine others with his ‘dancing’ skills and doing the Highland Fling, arms and legs flying; losing friends in the playground because of his fibs; learning to tell a little white lie so as not to hurt his mother’s feelings about her ‘ugly’ new brooch.
We had to make sure consistency in the many images of ‘Tim’ across the pages of the book – orange hair, blue shirt, etc. and both enjoyed the joint creative experience.”
Ace won an Arts Fellowship to Eltham College on the basis of this and his many other, intricate, drawings of space ships, rockets and creatures. He also won an Academic Scholarship, but then left Eltham to go to Wesley College on a Sports Scholarship, because of his prowess in Athletics.
