Mum's Centenarian Sunset

In this biographical portrait of my mother, I wanted to convey her strength of character, positive attitude, and alertness of mind. The central portrait represents the final year of her life, when she was 102 years old. It shows her in an active moment, communicating with wide-open eyes, listening and expressing herself with her hands, undaunted by blindness and breast cancer.

In the background I painted a sequence of portraits in monochrome from significant periods of her life – as a child, at 21 years of age, with me as a baby and my older brother Richard in Adelaide, and later in Broken Hill holding my baby brother Bill (at upper left of painting). The green background in the lower portion of the painting represents the fertile climate around Adelaide. The colour changes as it moves upwards past the Goyder line to the warmer hues of the dry outback. The glorious sunset, set against The Pinnacles, is a metaphor celebrating her long life.

Although my mother studied at the South Australian School of Art, she created with needles rather than painting. She applied her skills to dressmaking, tapestry knitting and designing embroidery patterns, all of which she taught me. The artist Dora Chapman, one of my mother’s colleagues, taught me when I attended the same Art School in Adelaide, as did her husband James Cant.