WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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Like all children I began painting when
I was about seven or eight and we all

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used to settle down in father's studio
and lie on our tummies and draw. I used

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to go out with my father when I was a
child. Father used to ride a bicycle with

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his with his satchel on his back and all
his sketching gear I used to have my

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little bicycle with my satchel on my
back and by the time I'd got all my oil

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paints out and my palette fixed up there
was father with the finished picture

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he'd say 'what on earth have you been doing' I haven't even got a beginning yet. My nature didn't

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lend itself to this quick watercolor
painting I wanted to model things and

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get things in the round. Numbers of
artists used to visit the old home

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father asked as children to bring out
our work to show what we could do and I

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remember that mine got the first prize
and that was the first step towards

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giving me confidence really to go on.
I used to milk cows before I went down to

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the art school each day and when I got
home at night and my father was all in

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favor of this because he said if you're
going to be an artist you need to be

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healthy and physically fit and how true
he was that I'm thankful to this day

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because I have an enormously strong
right arm. My first interest was perhaps

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flowers and people. I remember when I was a war artist right up in the steaming

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jungle of New Guinea I'd arranged myself
a beautiful native bowl full of flowers

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and I was sitting in the mess painting
this when I had a signal to be moved on

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down to Lae and I ignored the signal and
said go away I'm in the middle of

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painting flowers and I continued. Now I
think I've found my own environment in

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an old home in Hunters Hill in the very
wandering wilderness of a garden and the

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atmosphere is peaceful and very inducive to my work. This peaceful spot is not

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so remote that I'm not all too aware of
what is going on

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art world it is very hard to find what
is true to oneself one's own individual

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way of saying something is the important
thing