Nice and cosy (FREEZING) in the roof.
Hi I’m Cheryl and welcome to my site. So, about me, well…
I was born in Australia in the sixties and some of my earliest memories are of the tin shack that my father built by the surf beach in Torquay. The youngest of three kids, that tin shack was our family home. It’s corrugated iron walls and sand floor amplified the sounds of the ocean and remain etched into my being as one of life’s necessities.
At the age of ten a chance encounter with a pottery wheel focused my creativity. For those moments of solitude and commitment engaged with clay – the world existed only between my hands. I was fortunate at such an early age to have experienced intense glimpses of the creative process. School however wasn’t an environment I found conducive to learning. Failing art and photography in hindsight seems quite amusing considering my two career paths that followed as a television camera-woman and a visual artist.
Travelling extensively and accommodating Rheumatoid Arthritis has dictated a lot of my choices. I have spent a quarter of my life living abroad and in 1999, shortly after completing my Bachelor of Arts degree, my husband and I headed off to see some more of the world before settling in London. Studio space was a luxury that forced me to be innovative, this led to painting in the roof above my flat (image 1999). Accessible only by ladder; it consisted of a cardboard box for an easel, a light bulb and a chair with wheels – the ceiling was too low to stand. I painted here for my first solo exhibition in 2001 at the Australian High Commission, on the Strand (which was closed after my opening night due to concerns relating to 911).
Eventually I found a new studio and home on the Cornish coast. Rich in art history, living in St. Ives gave me a real taste of being a part of an artistic community. I consider it my second home and in 2005 I became a British citizen. Essentially an abstract painter, I returned to Australia to undertake my Master’s degree at the Queensland College of Art. In 2010, we relocated again to Port Douglas, in tropical Far North Queensland where we have since operated two commercial galleries and a studio near the beach where I continue to push paint.