Dandenong Rain
Forest© Kathy Miller 2004
About Kathy's workKathy is a completely self-taught artist. Until she turned
professional, she painted mostly zoological and botanical subjects.
She and her family visited Australia in 1998 – a trip that had
been planned for almost ten years. One of Kathy’s ambitions since being very young was to see Uluru (Ayer’s Rock) and it certainly was not
an anticlimax. Seeing 1000 year old Aboriginal rock paintings and carvings was a truly wonderful experience. Kathy left Uluru with the
feeling that a connection to her distant past had been awoken. To be able to tell stories and represent life with such an uncomplicated
technique fired her imagination.
Her first Aboriginally inspired painting was created during sick leave from her then current job.
She had torn a major tendon in her shoulder of her dominant arm. Every dot on that first painting was created by picking up the right hand
with the left in order to paint. She was very pleased with the result and became absolutely fascinated by the whole process of producing
this kind of image.
After leaving employment to turn professional, her first quest was to find the best method to produce a round
dot. Many of her earlier works were produced using a paintbrush and now are a source of irritation to her as the dots are not as uniform as
she would have liked. She tried cotton buds, twigs, the wooden ends of paintbrushes as well as a multitude of other unlikely objects. The
solution is a trade secret but she can now produce the regularity of dots that she desired.
The inspiration for many of her
paintings comes from nature – the patterns in everything we see as well as the birds, animals and flowers. The only painting that she ever
dreamed was ‘Legacy’. At exhibitions she will hear the occasional comment “Oh it’s Aboriginal art”, which frustrates her immensely. Look
closely – you will see the differences. The most important and widely used symbol that Kathy uses is the circle within circle one. To her,
this typifies life – everything is interlinked an co-dependent while individual life itself is a huge circle. She has the greatest respect
for the Aboriginal people.
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