Noosa River View
I received an email out of the blue that follows:
Hi Robert
I was in my local op shop in Melbourne today and came across a painting that I just had to buy – the colours were beautiful and it was just the piece I was looking for. It is signed with your name and is titled “Sunshine Coast”. From looking at your website, I think it might be one of your earlier works and I thought you’d be interested to see it again. I’d like to hear more about it if you can remember!
Kind regards
Kate Stanton
Wow Kate,
I know that painting is early and I’ll tell you the story. In 1978 I was the victim of a violent crime after being stabbed three times in the back. Happened on the famous Victoria Street Stairs Kings Cross, after I recovered I returned to the family fold – a story of horror, full of abuse, never mind. My mother was schizophrenic with paranoid delusions and such fun to be around NOT!
Nevertheless, she was a painter and had formed the Weyba Art Group which painted around the Sunshine Coast. We knew a lot of people with money, Noosa was awash with them. One of them bought that painting, my scan attached from my old records. Rich people get around and age into obscurity. A lot of my work has ended up with their relatives or sold on as my name can be found in various places and is on certain archived research materials. Most of my collected stuff is in the Brisbane City Collection, Townsville Council, and various places like the Townsville Hospital.
That painting is between 1979 to 1981, I’m not sure. I went to the QLD College of Art in 1984 and before that I ran the Bribie Island Art and Craft Centre.
I’m getting ready to leave Townsville, heading to teach at Rockhampton. You have lifted me into a nice place as I have been feeling very stressed lately, I’ve just finished two years of chemotherapy and my life is going to a new place in more ways than one.
Thank you, just what I needed. As I remember stuff I’ll add it to my blog about that painting.
Kindest Regards,
Robert
I might add I remember the man my mother was married to said, ‘If I painted in oils rather than acrylic using a different style, I might amount to something!?’
Amazing, I’ve had to survive so much nonsense in my time and still we move forward. I will die working, I just don’t have it in me to allow others to bring me down. They try, and sometimes I could have acted differently, but they need not have abused me either. I survived a tough childhood, I was a tough teenager, and grew hard. Some days I wonder if I could ever be loved or cared for, so I stopped wondering and cared for those that needed it instead. Life is never perfect, but to say it could be any better is to ask for miracles and I just can’t speak to god in that way anymore. After all, why keep testing me? This painting is a reminder of times when painting pictures outdoors meant something, when people got together to be part of their communities in a way that is needing to be re-learnt.