My Dear Dad

I have been thinking a lot about why I went down the path of art and painting.
I remember even as a little girl I loved cutting up tiny bits of coloured paper for no reason
other than the enjoyment of putting different colour combinations together, then mixing them up and starting again with another family of colours. What a weird kid I must have been!!! I was always scribbling on paper as a primary-school girl. Mum once reminded me that at teacher/parent interview the teacher said, “If she spent as much time on the content of her work as she does on drawing pretty borders around her exercise book pages, she’d be a great student.”

But really it was my wonderful dad, Larry, who encouraged me to be me.
He offered all four of us children every opportunity that he could. If the boys showed interest in sport, then there he was coaching the 7-aside rugby team and driving my brothers and their teammates to games every Saturday in his beat-up old plant delivery van. I was reserve for the reserve netball team for two years because I didn’t realise I was hopeless at ball skills. But Dad made a hoop off the shed wall and practiced after dinner each night with me then drove me to the Saturday games. He tried to make at least one of us good at music, so we were all bought recorders or ukuleles or some such. One of my brothers got a guitar and lessons as he showed the most promise. My sister has always loved books and Dad encouraged her to write and believed in her dream of becoming a teacher.

When I was 12, I painted my first frameable painting. Oh my gosh it was hideous! It was
1972, so remember if you will that the fashion in home décor included paintings on velvet.
The most famous being I think a mass-produced Mexican art. My 12-year-old self thought
they were beautiful, so I got a scrap of velvet from my dolls’ clothes sewing stash and
stretched it on a bit of old plywood. Then I painted a truly awful basket of flowers (flowers
and floristry being my other love). Well, Dad declared it a masterpiece and duly sent me to
the artist next door for two boring years of painting the same rock. I guess in painting that
stupid rock I did learn some valuable principals and techniques.

Then, in my fifth-form year again he gave me a big nudge. I was far more interested in
painting, fashion, flowers and boys to bother studying. So, he bribed me. He said “If you
pass School Certificate, which I know you can if you start applying yourself, then I will
convert the old pool pump shed into an art studio for you to paint in. What a prize! Of course, I passed my exams later that year.

I mucked around in that glorious space with a poster of Kenny Rogers on one wall and one
of the Pope on the other wall (I told you I was a weird kid) for the remaining years of my life at home. My dad, you see, believed in me. He gave me an identity. Along with Mum, he let me be me. He helped me to rise above the self-doubt and the loneliness of an artist. He loved my work before it was any good. He gave me some pretty brutal and honest feedback too later as I strived to put my work out in the world publicly.

He has been gone for more that 11 years now, but on the days that I think I am kidding
myself and I’ll never be any good and I should give up, I see his kind, darling face and I
know if he thought I could do it, then I shall give it another go.

Love you, Pop.