“My Mum, the brutality aside, always cooked us beautiful food, made us healthy lunches and the food was always good. She gave us kids good bones. I think she knew we’d need strong bones cos she was gonna beat the shit out us (laughs).
My sister got me an interview with the Canberra School of Art so I took a folder of art over and they accepted me. I stayed for 2 years. I majored in Print making under Jörg Giselher Schmeisser. He was amazing and when I said I was going, he said, You’re an artist already. We remained friends up until his death in 2012. It was 1979 when I left and that’s where I met Kezza (Kerry Leitch). Kezza had 2 kids and we were best mates for a long time, eventually becoming lovers and marrying. We’ve been together for 45 years.
I worked at The Smith Family as a volunteer on a truck and while there I applied for a job at The National Gallery. They were building the National Gallery and the job was packing up the collection. We were working in a storage area in Fyshwick. Another bloke Nat Williams and I packed the entire collection. They offered me a job as a Museum Assistant which I did for a year. We set the National Gallery up, hung all the paintings, stored all the sculptures. There was no such qualification in those days. We were all learning. They then offered me the job of Installations Co-ordinator and I jumped at that. That was fun and I stayed in that position for a few years.
I became very close with James Mollison, the Director. Kerry and I would drag our kids over there every second week for dinner, not many people were invited to his place so that was cool. He said to me one day, If ever you two decide to get married I’ll give you a Fred Williams. We married and I went back on a contract many years after I left and he was still the Director. I walked into his office and I said, I’m here to pick up the Fred Williams. He said, I’ll have it on my desk at lunchtime. The painting is of a man drinking at a bar. He said this reminds me of you, we’d go out for drinks together occasionally.
After that we moved to Alice Springs where I did a lot of artwork out there with Aboriginal mob. We’d go out on communities and work with traditional boys. That was a lot of fun. It’s a totally different world and one of our most special moments in, not just mine but Kerry’s lives. It was the most beautiful place in the middle of the desert. Not so great now but in the 90s it was incredible.
We came back and bought a farm at Rosebank and did the farming trip. I was pretty useless at that. I couldn’t kill animals so that wasn’t much use so I made a great loss out of that. We had the best times out there though and met many life long friends who became family, including you and your girls (me). Those 25 years on the farm were some of the very best times.
The whole time I was painting, nothing much else interested me and that was the main thing I was pretty good at. To anyone reading this, be good to people and leave a lasting impression with them, because 20 years after I left the National Gallery I was invited back to hang the Rembrandt show and then I was asked to take a job in Saudi Arabia. The money was too good to be true so off I went with a group of us to Saudi in 1998 for 12 months. It was the same work I did at the National Gallery but this was for the King Abdulaziz Museum. Kezza came over for 5 months. It was hard work. You can’t drink, very strict rules, but I found the people to be very honourable. It was a closed kingdom in those days. Incredible culture and the Museum was on 40 hectares. We paid off the mortgage and all our debts.
Following on from that I did the same thing in Hong Kong for 8 months. Here we are , a group of 4 guys going over to install their museum, a huge cultural difference but they opened their arms to us and trusted us. We were handling multi million dollar items.
Then 911 happened and literally overnight travel stopped as everyone was freaked out. So the work overseas stopped and I just painted and pretended I was a farmer.
I sell through Michael Reids Galleries and people have bought my works from all around the world. I have never pursued fame, I’m too much of a socialistic person, the wealth thing has always been a bit of a problem to me. Having worked in the Museum and art galleries they are so full of wankers, all I wanted to do was paint pictures, not sit there with the great or near great just so I could be seen, it makes me sick. It’s been to my detriment though because I could have gone a lot further but that world’s not me.
I just did a portrait of my brother who’s 6 years older than me and he was diagnosed with cancer that’s rapidly spread to bone cancer. We facetime every week! I wanted to do a painting of him so I went over to NZ at Christmas, thinking it would be his last Christmas. He’s still with us. I did a couple of sketches, took some photos and did an image of him (Photo of painting in comments). He was wrapped and there was a portrait gallery in Wellington who had a big show called the Adam Portrait Prize. I could enter because I was a New Zealander as was my brother. The main reason I wanted to do it was so I could take my brother along to the opening but unfortunately I didn’t make the cut. Out of 450 people only 40 were chosen. I remember you (me) said, ‘What?? Was Stevie Wonder on the selection panel?(laughs) You have a steel jaw when you’re an artist and that’s why so many choose another career but I’ve been stupidly doing the same thing for 66 years.
We used to drive past the old Stegbar building at the Rous Rd / Bruxner Hwy roundabout, before that it was a Golden Fleece servo. We wondered if it would ever come up for sale. I was teaching art down at Ballina where I’ve been teaching since 2006. I came back and saw a For Sale sign. I went in and it was mess but I saw all the magnificent things like the beams and it was an Art Deco building. Kez didn’t see what I saw it but she trusted me. We managed to get money through a Super scheme she’d had for years so we didn’t have to sell the little investment property we had down the coast. We bought the place, It was a big toxic factory and we sold the little coast unit to fund it. We sold the farm and I built it myself into a 4 bedroom home. It’s amazing and we love it.
While I was building I had some near death experiences where I almost cut my hand off, I got cancer in the leg and some moments that weren’t particularly good health-wise but I soldiered on and finished the house. After seeing my brother terminally ill, I came home and something inside me decided for me to give up alcohol and the fags. It was like something inside of me said, Well if you’re not going to do it then I’ll do it for you. I didn’t drink out of necessity, I just enjoyed a drink every day. Certainly my brother was the catalyst and he is very proud.
My Dad died of cancer in his 60s. It was sad because he never saw all the good things that happened to me. I would like him to have seen Melissah and Adam grow up and our grandkids Ayden and Charlie. Also the family who bought Rosebank have become close friends and their little girl Cedar Rose is like our adopted Granddaughter. She calls us Nanny and Poppy and we adore her.
We plan to stay here. At this age I think it’s probably cheaper to buy a coffin up here. We can go down behind Harvey Norman and find a good size cardboard box. That’ll do me.”