INSIGHTA
s a small child, my earliest
memories of art were: loving
colouring-in books to colour in
the drawings with pencils, although I
wasn’t too keen on painting; my Grade
3 primary school teacher, Miss Toomey,
putting one of my drawings on the wall in
the classroom of which I was very proud;
and winning 1st place for art and craft at
the age of seven at the school fete, and
not knowing that my Mother kept the
certificate I received all those years ago,
which I discovered after her passing.
I am totally self-taught with no
formal training whatsoever. As with
many artists, working full-time and
raising my two small sons, there was
no time for art, although once they had
grown up and had their own lives to
lead, more free time was available for
painting at my leisure.
As time went by my love of painting
continued until 2008, when browsing
the internet I discovered “scratchboard
art” on the website Wet Canvas. I had
been a member for many years, and
on one particular day when looking
through the index on this site, I saw
the heading of Scratchboard and was
immediately intrigued as to what it wasall about. Under this heading I saw
the most amazing artwork, showing
incredible realism and detail, and knew
I had to find out more. Ever since then
it is a medium I am passionate about,
and my painting has fallen by the
wayside. I attend a small social painting
group once per week and when there
I always feel motivated to paint again,
but once home it is back to Scratchart.
Scratchboard - an “unglamorous
name for beautiful art” - an appropriate
quote I read by another artist recently,
is quite labour-intensive and requires
many hours to do a small area of work