12/10/2026
🎨 𝗧𝗛𝗘 𝗝𝗢𝗨𝗥𝗡𝗘𝗬 𝗕𝗘𝗚𝗜𝗡𝗦 — 𝟮𝟬𝟬𝟴
𝗥𝘂𝗻𝗻𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗛𝗼𝗺𝗲
In 2008 I sold my first painting.
It was called “Running Home”, a small 16 x 20 inch oil on canvas, and it went all the way from my little corner of Queensland to a lady on the East Coast of the USA whom I knew slightly through a large online art group.
That group was a fascinating place. There were artists and collectors from all over the world, from complete beginners to professionals, and people of every age. It was through that group that my first collector found me.
I remember being particularly touched when she told me that she had put a note inside the back of the frame for her daughter to read one day when she inherited the painting — saying that she was never to sell it.
Now that is something an artist never forgets.
She had the painting framed and hung in her living room, where some of her friends saw it. A few of those friends subsequently became collectors of my work too.
That was one of the great pleasures of selling paintings. Every now and then someone would send me a photograph of one of my paintings hanging in their home or office. Seeing something I had created, sitting in somebody else's life, was enormously satisfying.
A little about the painting.
At the time I was painting with a great deal of colour, so I decided to set myself a challenge.
Could I create a dramatic painting using essentially black and gold, and make it work?
I imagined a scene from another era: a storm approaching across open country, lightning splitting the sky, and two figures hurrying home.
It was quite a challenge, particularly because I was working from my imagination rather than simply reproducing a scene in front of me.
I was rather pleased with the result.
Unfortunately, my first experience of exhibiting it was less successful. 😄
I entered Running Home in a regional art competition in the monochrome section, only to discover that my interpretation of monochrome wasn't quite what the judges had in mind. Because I had used yellow ochre as well as black, the painting was disqualified and never even made it onto the wall!
A useful lesson in reading the rules, perhaps.
It was also my first — and, thankfully, my only — disappointing exhibition experience.
And where was I painting?
At that time my studio was actually a third bedroom.
My darling husband and I were both retired and living on four acres on a hill in a small tropical seaside village in Queensland, with a population of about 2,000.
He had his computer and files occupying one part of the room, and I had my easel and paints occupying the other.
Not exactly the grand artist's studio one sees in magazines — but it was ours, and I loved it.
And so, with Running Home, my painting journey really began.
2008. The first sale. The first collector. The first little step into a world I had no idea would take me quite so far.
