Girls and their Art

It was all about girls and their Art by the end of last week. Maxie and Claire were getting lots of publicity and expecting lots of visitors from the very effective promotion of the Queanbeyan Arts Society Open Studio and Arts Trail.

Ella on Thursday was in a very artistic frame of mind, completing some of the most focussed and layered pictures I have seen her do at our house. She responded well to the new "rolling" oil crayons and got very inspired by incorporating flowers from the garden and her water paints.


She looks so much more grown up since returning from "overseas".


On Friday we met up with Tania McM. in Sydney at SCECGS Redlands in Cremorne and spent a wonderful hour or so with her Morgan experiencing her final Visual Arts portfolio presentation for the International Baccalaureate year 12 assessment in the rather gloomy Redlands Hall.

We found it an extraordinary privilege to gain this insight into Morgan's thinking and talents through her amazing art works: installations, sculpture, photography, drawing and painting...a very mature and insightful body of work!

Morgan has grown up as a global citizen, most recently as a Londoner but previously, for an extended period, in Tokyo, Japan, and lots of other world travel during school breaks. She was born in Canberra and attended Ainslie PS, when I knew her better!

Her embracing of other cultures, the world of books and ideas, and the life of the mind have all been great influences on her work. She is obviously a deep thinker with multiple talents and an extraordinarily hard worker, and is heading for quite a brilliant IB score.

But I loved her unaffected warmth and great optimism the most.

We celebrated over lunch afterwards with Tania at Delante - Cafe and Deli in Waters St Neutral Bay and tried to analyse how she had done such a brilliant job in producing Morgan (albeit with Allan's help).