Oh hey..

Hasn’t this year just flown by? I feel like it just began, and yet here we are in the middle. I’ve been keeping busy, as usual, with family, painting, lots of long walks, plus lots of non-arty contract work. The exhibition at Miss Perez concluded in early June, and I entered the painting above in the Campbelltown Art Show. 

This particular piece evolved whilst I researched the history of the City of Campbelltown, prior to the exhibition. It’s called ‘It Takes a Village’ and is an abstracted depiction of the early farming families who worked the land, taking their produce to market, and joining together to create the City of Campbelltown as we know it today.

Campbelltown holds some special memories for me as well. It was the first place my family and I lived in when we came to Australia. I was a wee bub.. only six months old. My first school was walking distance from where the Art Show was held, and the kindergarten down the road was the first place I ever felt like an artist. I can still smell that kindy.. a mixture of playdoh, paint, and wooden toys.

One day, the kindergarten teacher brought out the easels and put them in the room for us to paint on, and I couldn’t believe it… it was like a dream.. were they really for us? They sure were, and I was in heaven. Painting on that easel felt like home. I smooshed that paint around to my heart’s desire.

In that kindy, you could either find me curled up in the sun-filled library with a book, painting at that easel, or trying to beat the boys in running races (they told me I couldn’t beat them ’cause I was a girl, but they were wrong). 

I wonder if kindergarten teachers know the impact they have on the little people in their care? I sure hope so.