My Journey in Art

From Farmer’s wife, in the Victorian Mallee

to

Director/ Owner of Kerry Anne’s Fine Arts Gallery

in

Toorak, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

I was born in the Mallee in the tiny bush town of Hopetoun. My family had farmed in the Mallee for many years.  When I was five, we moved once more to a farm, a dairy farm, and from then on, life got tough.

However, I was a dreamer and the land was in my soul.  I am sure that is why later in life, so many of the early Heidelberg School paintings resonated strongly with me. I always loved colour and colouring-in,  but in my early life, art influences were nil. So I drew on the edge of whatever paper I could get.

My mother was an exquisite dress designer and made all our clothes. She had an excellent eye for colour combinations in dress materials and fashion, and I believe that was unconsciously passed onto me. The land around me has always been my canvas, so drawing literally on the land, in the dust, was a favourite pastime.

I was born with a chronic autoimmune disease that remained undiagnosed until adulthood. As well, I was extremely dyslexic with severe myopia. So when I was finally given glasses at the age of 12 a whole new world of distance opened up for me.  At long last I could see faces, people, leaves on treetops and distant blue hills. I was in heaven but because I saw things, only in blurry shapes which were identifiable by my best friend, colour.

As I grew older, I began to hear about art, and as I could at last see properly, I became more enamoured with the wildlife, nature and the seasonal changes in terms of colour.  Years later, when I went to boarding school, I wanted to study art as a subject in high school. But, because I was the only girl in years 11 and 12, the subject of ‘art’ suddenly became unavailable to me. I was devastated.  So, I worked even harder to get good end-of-the-year exam results, which were enough for me to be awarded a scholarship to La Trobe University. Success at last!! There, I completed a Teaching Degree, specialising in ART. 

Many years later, after returning to the Mallee to teach, I married a local farmer and had three children. The progression of my autoimmune disease, together with violent bouts of domestic violence over a period of 22 years, saw me turn, in my darkest days and during the long nights, to my drawing and my love of art.

Each Tuesday, I would drive to the mobile library in our little town and struggle out of it, with as many art books as I could carry. I pored over these books, day and night, absorbing every minute detail of past and present artists’ paintings.  I finally had something in my isolated life on the farm that I could do well and enjoy. 

The abuse in my marriage forced me to leave some years later. By that time, I was selling my artwork and teaching art to a group of local artists. After the divorce, I was finally free to establish a studio for the first time in the new home I bought. As I now had to earn a living, I began to teach more seriously with my classes in demand.  As numerous art prizes and good sales in my art came in, together with working as a…” personal assistant to a psychologist, I managed to keep the bills paid until a settlement was reached.

 At the same time, I began to write my first full-length novel, ‘After the Dark Comes the Light.’Some four years later, after my beautiful daughter had gone to uni and was settled, I set out by myself on an extensive Art Crawl around the world.   

My intent was to learn as much as I could about all sorts of different art, artists’ processes, exhibitions, printing, production and circulation and so much more. It took me to so many amazing places, and I met some of the best the world had to offer, like spending the afternoon in Robert Bateman’s studio having afternoon tea with him and Birgit; what a privilege for a little Aussie vegmite artist from Down Under in the Mallee.

As I travelled alone across Canada and the USA in my old 1972 Ford Econovan, which I called ‘The Radisson, ‘ I began to relax and absorb the extraordinary landscape around me. I would loved to have spent time painting but I had to be careful being a lone woman travelling in an unknown country, not to mention the enormous cities. The bottom line was I learnt so much about international art, myself and the goodness of others.

Bob Bateman advised me to absorb the land, the animals, and the people, and when I needed to paint what I had experienced it would be in my psyche to draw on.    And he was so right.