I Followed the Sun

Born in Yorkshire 1943, I displayed some artistic talent throughout my schooling and my teachers suggested I might think about art school. But I wanted to follow the sun and after seeing the film ‘A Town Like Alice’, decided that would be a good start and at the age of 18 had saved up enough to buy a passage on a boat to Australia.

Alice was more than everything I had hoped for and I knew instantly I was a desert person. The stunning colours and vistas of the inland in the midst of a drought reiterated my desire to paint, and those scenes remained in my head throughout leaving Alice seven times for good, before finally settling there in my 30s when I began to dabble with paint.

I felt I did very badly and wondered why I wanted to paint so badly if I could only paint badly!

I chose watercolour, thinking it to be the simplest medium, Ha! I bought all the cheapest paints, paper and brushes, and it took several years to understand my ineptitude