The girl and the dancers II

I love the movement of dancers and am lucky enough to have visited a number of festivals where people from local Indigenous communities perform. The vibrant colours of the women's skirts create an additional rhythm with the yellow of the wraps and scarves that are used as part of the dance. Younger ones are included in the dance, sometimes joining in with the dancers when they want to, sometimes watching from the centre of the dance, looking and learning. I loved working with the shades of yellow here and the contrast with the blue of the girl's top. It gives a feel of joy and purpose to the image I feel, reflected in the girl's intent expression and the similarly purposeful expressions in the women's hands that are glimpsed framing or enclosing the young one.

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I was born in 1967 in the west of England and came to Australia with my husband in 1998, settling in Alice Springs in 2000. After completing a BA and a PhD in Literature, and a period with the British Foreign Office, I began teaching in 1995, which I’ve been doing ever since.

I paint in oils and while I have no formal training, I have developed my practice over the years through my involvement with the Central Australian Art Society and Studio 12 artists’ collective (life-drawing, plein-air painting, exhibiting).

I’m fascinated by the identity of things, what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins called their ‘inscape,’ the internal power that holds the elements together and makes the thing unique. My paintings are an attempt to represent the moment of glimpsing or ‘catching’ the inscape of the thing, be it a skyline, a person or a camel. They also explore the way light works both to shape and to convey identity and feeling. The quality of the light in central Australia still astonishes me after years here.