With moving house and clean ups, very little remains of art work done almost 60 years ago.  For these few, I am grateful to my mother who thought they were worth keeping.

The student colours have faded with time.

In the following year, I did an oil painting on this same theme using the geometric style, and it worked extremely well!  So much so, that a  distant family member asked for it, and it has long gone.

When I am outdoors sketching, and people stop and say, “I can’t paint or draw, I’m no good at that”, I like to look back at this.  None of us can sit down and play the piano first time either, and even skilled pianists will do their daily exercises in playing scales.

And so it is with painting.  I would be a lot better if I had kept up the habit of spending at least 30 minutes each day with a sketchbook.

Mrs Todd gave me some quality paper and conte sticks, and asked me to see if I could try to do an entry for the yearbook in my own time.

The only thing I heard in Art History that year were comments about how Monet’s paintings of Rouen Cathedral had pockets of geometric shapes of colour as shadows, and I decided to apply that in a larger way to our own St Peter’s cathedral.

The yearbook committee were very pleased, but the printer sent it back with a request it be redone on white paper, as the printing techniques at that time could not reproduce from the darker conte paper I had used.

I was reluctant to spend the many more hours it took to redo the sketch, but I am glad I did, and I applied that same geometric approach to other artwork.

This artwork was an illustration for the following contribution:

Abstract Autumn
This day have I awoken from a dream.
Too long I have drifted unknowingly.
All my day’s were filled with routine.
Patterns, never changing, were my life,
But no more.
For today I have discovered beauty.
IVIany years she has surrounded me
But I have lived on unconscious of her.
Now. I have discovered her. personified
In abstract autumn.
The leaves are yellow, brown and red.
But some are still tinted green from summer
The boughs are brown and wet and shiny.
I cannot see the grass for leafy blankets
But it is there.
The sky is a transparent blue.
I seem to look right through it to infinity.
The clouds are not alien bodies but part of it
The birds are moving too fast through it.
They do not belong.
Here all is quiet. tranquil beauty.
Speed has no part in my discovery
And I am glad the birds have gone
I am now left to enjoy
Abstract autumn.
Julie

There was a first, and best, painting of sailing boats in watercolour, done as a class assignment, which Mrs Todd wanted me to frame and enter in the Advertiser Art competition.

That didn’t happen, as framing costs were too expensive for me, but I liked the design so much I tried it in other media; here in pencil, and the following year in oils.

Unfortunately, the watercolour painting has been lost.

This painting has been damaged a little, and the colours have become a little dull, but I am glad I kept it.

Our first day introduction to Drawing, after being freed from Latin, was amazing!

The teacher was young and beautiful, and dressed in a smartly elegant style, and we were awestruck.  She demanded, and received, complete attention and concentration during class.

Our first day exercise was to paint a still life without thinking of what the objects were, but simply to record the shapes of colour we could see in front of us.  That first lesson drew us over the biggest hurdle in painting, and it immersed me in the delight of applying colour, a transforming experience which I still enjoy.

I am sorry to have forgotten her name, but I remember most everything she said, and I am forever grateful to her for the way she taught us by leading and guiding us into:

a love of beauty in life;
a willingness to tackle hard work;
a delight in colour and form.

During that year she managed to teach us all of the basic principles of design and composition.  Any book I read now only refreshes the knowledge she gave us.

I think she left the school at the end of that  year.  How very fortunate I was that our paths crossed for that short time.

I also studied Woodwork during my first two years of High School, which included Perspective Drawing, and that made it easier in later years to understand perspective in painting, as well as making frames for paintings.

Mrs Lindsaar had a marked Eastern European accent, but I didn’t notice that after I quickly understood her love of Art and her gentle and kind method of teaching.

Mrs Todd was also a wonderful teacher, she took us for Design and Composition,

I think attending a good art class is important to set beginners in the right direction, to teach basic principles and techniques of composition and painting, and to give encouragement to work throuth any difficulties.  But it is only a beginning, the real painting begins when we are immersed in the struggle to record and convey our vision of the wonderful beauty of creation.  That vision is unique for each person, and cannot be taught.  But a teacher can set challenges to enable a student to gain the experience of that struggle, and I was fortunate that Mrs. Todd knew how to give that guidance.

She also spoke about the importance of keeping appropriate works for my portfolio for entrance into Art School, which would have been through the Art Teaching course, but that didn’t happen for a variety of reasons.

As the third component for that year, Lettering was replaced by History of Art, and was taught by another teacher who did not have the same gift of encouragement.  During the exam at the end of the year, I found I couldn’t answer any of the questions on History of Art, but I saw I could do something on the Lettering question, so although I was out of practice I answered that instead.  That would have reduced my grade from A to B, much to Mrs Todd’s disappointment.

The following year was my final at High School, it had a large workload, and for relaxation in my spare time I read books on Art History.  By the end of that year I could have easily answered those Art History exam questions.