Shift Stirrers
Has there been a time in your life when you wanted to make changes? If you're changing something about your vocation and passion we are the podcast to help motivate you. Our focus is on interviewing people who have made life changing transitions
Shift Stirrers
Shift Stirrers – Jenny Croom – Paint like a 5 year old
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Shift Stirrers – Jenny Croom – Paint like a 5 year old
In this episode, we sit down with Jenny Croom, winner of Australia's first Portrait Artist of the Year competition in 2025. Recording in her beautiful home on the lakes, surrounded by her paintings, Jenny takes us through her journey from painting window ledges in her husband's dark electronics shop to winning a national competition and having her work hang in the National Portrait Gallery. We discover how returning to Australia after four years in Germany awakened her need to capture our brilliant light, why she "paints like a five-year-old" to start every canvas, and how stepping away from art during family life didn't end her creative journey - it just delayed it. Jenny's warmth, wisdom, and radical honesty about being the oldest contestant ("my future's a lot shorter than the others!") reveals how age, sacrifice, and staying playful can lead to unexpected triumph. This one's for anyone who's ever had to put their passion aside and wondered if it's too late to pick it back up.
Thank you so much for listening to The Shift Stirrers podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, please hit that follow button so you'll get notified whenever we release new content. We'd love to hear from you—feel free to reach out at theshiftstirrers@gmail.com, or you can find our individual email addresses and websites in the show notes below. We love questions.
You can also connect with us on Instagram @shiftstirrers.
If you found value in today's conversation, we'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave us a review or rating on your podcast platform. It really helps others discover the show. And if you know someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it with them.
Until next time, keep stirring things up.
Ah just a quick disclaimer - Michelle and Rosemary are not experts in any of the discussions today. We present this podcast in the interest of getting curious about change.
You can purchase Rosemary's books on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0FS275RHJ
Our other contacts
theshiftstirrers@gmail.com
https://rosemarypattisonart.com/
https://michellebenson.com.au/
https://www.instagram.com/rosemarypattisonart/
https://www.instagram.com/michelle_benson_art/
Music by Sound Designer Erin Krejany
https://www.linkedin.com/in/erin-krejany-186829355
Thank you so much for listening to The Shift Stirrers podcast.
If you enjoyed this episode, please hit that follow button so you'll get notified whenever we release new content. We'd love to hear from you—feel free to reach out at theshiftstirrers@gmail.com, or you can find our individual email addresses and websites in the show notes below. We love questions.
You can also connect with us on Instagram @shiftstirrers.
If you found value in today's conversation, we'd be incredibly grateful if you could leave us a review or rating on your podcast platform. It really helps others discover the show. And if you know someone who would benefit from this episode, please share it with them.
Until next time, keep stirring things up.
Ah just a quick disclaimer - Michelle and Rosemary are not experts in any of the discussions today. We present this podcast in the interest of getting curious about change.
You can purchase Rosemary's books on Amazon
https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0FS275RHJ
Our other contacts
theshiftstirrers@gmail.com
Welcome to the Shift Stirits. Before we dive in, we acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands where we record. Michelle and Roseme work on the lands of the Bun Morang and Warangeri people of the Kulin Nation. We pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. As we talk about transitions and shifts in our own lives, we recognise that First Nations people have been adapting, surviving and thriving on this continent for over 65,000 years. The world's longest continuing culture. Sofranking was never ceded, always was, always will be.
SPEAKER_00Okay, everybody, we're here to say hello to you today. And we're with the beautiful Jenny Kroom in her gorgeous house that's right on the lakes. Um and Jenny Kroom, for all of you who don't know, won the uh first Australian portrait artist of the year in 2025. Welcome, Jenny. It's so nice to have you. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm very happy to be here with you. Having you here today is just wonderful. It's it's wonderful and seeing all your work around the house is beautiful. Rosemary, I'm just gonna ask you, why do we stir the shift? I think you're gonna tell me. Okay. What we want to do is talk to people who are in the corporate world but want to have an artisian life to get you to curious about how you can change your life, to add your your artistic creations into it. Jenny Kroom is a lifelong artist, and she is here today to help us stir that shift. So I'm Michelle Benson. And I'm Roseme Patterson. And I'm Jenny Kroom, and we're the sister.
SPEAKER_02I'm Michelle, how did you get this special person for us? We're so happy.
SPEAKER_00I watched the Australian Portrait Artist of the Year last year, and I decided that Jenny was the perfect person for us. She she represents so much about women in art and how they have to make the decisions around their busy lives with their families and their partners to actually fit their art in. And that story inspired me. And after talking to Jenny, it's inspired me even more. So, Roseme, do you want to click ahead with the first question?
SPEAKER_02Great. Yes, Jenny. So you grew up in post-war Morabin, and through good times, your mum made your clothes. I remember my mum making minimous. Did you have a moon moon?
SPEAKER_01I don't remember the moo-moose. My mum used to do these flouncy skirts for me. I don't know. She was very keen on the flouncy skirt.
SPEAKER_02Yep. And then you married your husband and moved to Germany for four years. So with this part, you're going to talk us through how Europe shaped how you see art and beauty.
SPEAKER_01My goodness. Yes. Well, after growing up in Melbourne, which was fine for me. I guess I was pretty okay at school, although I never felt driven to do anything particular. I just, I don't know, I went along with the crowd a little bit. I wish I'd been a bit more outstanding, but I wasn't. Um and then I met my husband and that decided me that I wouldn't go on to uni. I didn't, as I said, I didn't have any drive towards a career particularly. It was different back then, it really was. I met my husband and we, well, obviously, we married. It was easy to get jobs, easy to for us to get a house. I'm so sorry for all the younger people listening now because things have changed so much. But it was a different time. Anyway, we had a few things go wrong for us, and we just decided that we would make a change for ourselves, and we went to Europe. And over there, everything seemed exciting. Obviously, different language, different everything. I actually, well, my husband went to work at an electronics monolith, was worldwide. Um, and he's he's uh he was an electronics engineer, and so he had the work that he loved in an experimental area. Um I think this at this point I went through the most nervous thing in my life when I fronted up for an interview with a German boss, and my English, my German rather, was very good for the first 30 seconds and then it finished. So, you know, it was a bit scary, but I did it and I got the job. And the strange thing was that he really wanted me to speak English while I was working so that everybody else could learn from me. And in fact, I even started taking classes for the executive staff. Wow, and at the same time I was lucky enough to be learning German, so it was a real win-win thing.
SPEAKER_00That's gorgeous. And then then you came back to Australia. You k you came back, and the first thing that blew your mind was the light. Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_01From the moment that we arrived in Australia, and both of our families were there, my husband's and my family. They separated us so that each family had their person and we drove home separately. I remember that. But just looking through the car windows at the light, it was amazing. Europe is the civilization is older. So many things have a sort of a crumbling beauty to them. I mean, there's a lot of modern stuff too, but also the light is softer. It's not sure why it is, small cloud, just different atmosphere, I guess. But it was softer. And the Australian light was like a spotlight, and it just got me very excited. I didn't know why, but I loved the light straight away.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I remember I came over in '72 uh with my family. We were 10-pound palms. Oh, good feeling. Um we came out and uh I was dressed in a woollen suit and it was 42 decorines. But the thing that hit me was how sharp the contrast was in the light, which I I love. I really love it. And and having been back to Europe since, I I I still love that light. But you were working, you then went and worked in your husband's shop in a in a dark room in the dark shop where you painted on the window leach and you were training yourself on how to look at things and balance your business with your passion. Yes, that's true. That's true.
SPEAKER_01Yes, my husband, when we came back, and he'd had thoughts to work in a particular area, but they weren't hiring at that time. And he had all this high-end training, which he couldn't use. However, he also loved music and sound systems he knew inside out. So he decided he'd start his own business. And of course, we were both in it together. He knew everything about it, knowing nothing about electronics, but at least I could help run things, do things in a shop. It wasn't a busy place where people were coming in, interrupting us every day to buy something. It's just not like electronics, or at least not back then. But I did my bit, but I had a lot of time to myself. Uh and this light that I'd mentioned, it had just, I don't know, woken something up in me. I wanted to put it down, I wanted to paint it. In school, way back in school, I had loved painting, and I I'd really got into it then. But uh back in Australia with this light, I thought I'd just have to. So I did start painting in the back room of the shop, which was pretty dim, and uh sort of a long, narrow room with a dark floor, and it had a small window looking out to a south courtyard. And the um I do remember the windowsill above an old sink, uh, and the light was very cool coming in. It was almost European, in fact. Um, I put a a cyclomen pot plant there, and so I painted set up an easel and a canvas and I painted what I had to look at. Uh, and that really got me back into it. But of course, I wanted to go out and see the landscape. And that was a bit of another story, which leads us into um Rosemary.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so you were talking about not having really a drive at school, but you actually then had that drive to get out and some landscape. And if someone wanted to be so good at something like you are, would I mean there's research that says do it for 10,000 hours, that 10,000 rule, which you have done sort of organically perhaps. But yeah, tell us about um yeah, going out and painting in solitary driving around. Yes.
SPEAKER_00You're right. You can see me okay there, can you?
SPEAKER_01I can see you, yeah. Alright, it's fine. You look beautiful. Oh, thank you. So do you. So do you look at us. So from painting in the shop, I really wanted to go and do a little bit more, and so I started painting painting landscapes because that's what I, you know, the first thing that grabbed me on in the car driving home from the airport. It was the light on the gum trees and on the on the paddocks, and just the the colours and the contrasts and the light and the shade were very different to what I'd been looking at for the last four years. Gary, my husband, he was very busy. By this stage we had another person working for us who uh could sometimes manage the shop and help Gary as well. Gary knew that I loved to paint and he didn't want to keep me a prisoner or anything, so he was encouraging me to at least get some time out doing what I wanted. Then again, I I did need to help the business. I wanted that to thrive. That was our livelihood. However, I did start going out and just painting wherever I could find what I considered a nice landscape. I was pretty brave, I think, or I just didn't even think about it, but it seems brave now. I just get in the car and drive to the country. And you don't have to go too far out of Melbourne. I drive towards the find a spot where I could see trees and kills and light on this, and oh my goodness, look at the shadows, the colour in the shadows. I remember seeing um there's a colour called Elizarin Crimson, which is a beautiful, rich, rich red. And I could see red in a lot of the gum trees, and actually the gum tree chips often have red in them, so I think that probably explains it. But you find colours that you can mix into the paint, and you get curious about what colours will produce that particular shade that you want. So anyway, that was a bit of my training. I didn't do it terribly often. I don't think it would have even been one day a week doing that. Sometimes I would just work from a photograph or something like that in the back of the shop. I was also working in the shop, not just doing this, but I was combining it. And then I did get some of my paintings framed, and the framer asked where I was learning or if I was learning, something like that. And I wasn't at that stage, but he recommended I go to a fellow called Lance McNeil. He was in the city and he had a studio there, City of Melbourne, that is. Um he had a studio in Hardware Lane for anybody who knows, it's it's a great area now. And so I went there, I think it was for one afternoon a week for almost two years, and it was amazing. But he's what you would call a strict tonal realist, and that means not looking really at the well, looking mainly at the light and dark, the tone. So the shadows form the shapes of what you see. You don't draw lines around everything first. You don't draw with a line because in nature there are very few lines that are just edges. And so you create the edges from a dark block and a light block. And then some people say you've got a line down there between them. It's simply where two tones meet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, um I'm I'm actually looking whilst we're talking, I might take a photograph of it. And a beautiful painting you've done on the wall, it looks like uh where is that one? Can you explain that?
SPEAKER_01Ah, well, that's gosh, that's the Northern Territory. It's not anything I saw myself, but my brother had a photograph um that he had taken, and it was magnificent. It is magnificent. Yeah. It is magnificent. It's one of those gorgeous, it's just wonderful.
SPEAKER_00So I'm just gonna take you back a step um because I know that that we we got some more questions about your work with Lance McNeil. Um, but um you in our interview, you know, we talked about pivotal moments that changed your painting, and a lot of that was around family constraints, uh interruptions with families, all the joys of bringing up children and you know what happens in their world. And you said that this caused a pivotal change in how you thought about your painting. Yes. You don't need to go into details, but it would be nice to know what the pivotal change was.
SPEAKER_02Women have to step away from passions.
SPEAKER_01We do, and I think that's an important point. Yes, I think it is. And look, it's not unusual. This is just, I think, what many people do, but it's usually women within a family because traditionally, and remember I grew up in the forties, that's just what happened. Well, I was born in the forties anyway. Um, but yes, I managed to paint and bring up the girls and somewhat help my husband in the business still. Um, but then one of my well, yes, there was a bit of illness in the family for a while, and I I couldn't concentrate on my art and give the attention that I needed to give and I wanted to give. So I did stop painting for a while. I don't know how long anymore, but it was a real break. So, yes, when I did come back to painting, that was interesting because I suddenly just thought, oh, I don't feel like painting trees anymore. What will I do? I want to play with the paint again. I know, abstracts will be easy. That is so stupid. They're not easy. Abstracts are far harder than I think anybody could imagine. But I didn't know where I was going. I was playing with the paint and it was lovely, but I had no, I didn't know if it was good or bad, I had no real purpose to it. But after a while I noticed I could see faces in the things, the patterns I was making. And so I veered that way and I started to enhance the faces, and I guess that's the start of the portrait journey. Well, or you know, I wouldn't say painting faces is always portraits, sometimes it is, but that was the start of the faces, seeing them emerge from the abstract.
SPEAKER_00Which there's one here. Oh no, no, that's not. We're gonna go there. Excuse me a moment. Where is no, we haven't got it here, but we we will photograph one that's absolutely beautiful and put it in here. Okay, okay, Rosemary. So on to the big um the Lance McNeil question.
SPEAKER_02Right. So as you were talking, Jenny, about the um Lance McNeil training. So could you talk us through a little bit more of that?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Well, I've mentioned that the tonal painting is looking at the shades, the tones, the light and dark. That is the major thing. You start off by putting in all the darks in the painting. But to train our eyes to see the darks and the shades of dark, the shades of grey, there are so many. We did some very interesting exercises. He would set things up in one room, it might have been a bowl of fruit. And so many people think, oh, how boring. But honestly, once you start looking at at the thing as an exercise, trying to analyze how dark this is and how light that is, everything is interesting. Anyway, we'd we would go and look at the fruit in one room, and then we had to come back to the other room and put that on canvas just in shades of grey, like it was from memory. It's failed since I think. But anyway. Wow. It was good for them. And another exercise I remember was homework we had. We had to go home and paint three white eggs on a white sheet of paper, just again in black and white. So shades of grey. And it's trying to fine-tune your eye to see the delicate differences.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it is hard. It's very hard.
SPEAKER_01So that's the the main thing that I took away from that. Colour comes secondary to the tone.
SPEAKER_00And if I go on to the next question with that, which is fi about finding faces, which we're sort of puffing a bit, but that's not a bad thing. Finding faces in the abstract. Uh did that tonal work help you with that? Did that because because the face is fourth tonals.
SPEAKER_01It is, although with that particular style, and I don't even know what to call it, uh, it was it had patterns, it had lines, and it was very new for me. I don't think tonal work helped me very much there because I wasn't really looking for subtlety and tones are more subtle. This is also the time that I I discovered acrylic paints. Until this time I'd been painting in oil. I'd thought acrylics just too brash and plasticky up until then. But you know, I was doing new things, so I gave it a go, and actually they were much better than I'd expected, and it all depends what you do with them. But getting into painting these abstracted people, as I did, I used all the bold brash colours and I I had a lot of fun doing it. So I had a few years, I think a couple of years, painting that way. I I won an award at one of the shows for the best modern work. Actually, again, another one at the McClellan Guild, which had a biannual show, I think. So I was fortunate, but I was doing work that I loved, it was really exciting.
SPEAKER_00So in your artist statement that's on your website, you talk about um the acceleration of chaos of intuitive brushwork and the delicate control of the right the right highlight on the eye. How do you balance those energies?
SPEAKER_01Well, that is a very interesting question, and I actually don't know myself because I think I don't really think about it that much when I start a painting, and that's mainly where the chaos comes in. I really like to start not even with a brush sometimes, but with a rag or a sponge, and I get some colour on it and I just wipe it, you know, like a kindergarten kid. Paint like a five-year-old. That's the way you start authentic.
SPEAKER_00Can we call the episode that's a little bit? We're leaving that bit in, by the way. Paint like a five-year-old, what? Well, we're gonna call the episode that paint like a five-year-old. I don't think that's original. I'm sure I've heard that elsewhere. No, it doesn't matter though.
SPEAKER_01I took that on board and and it there's joy in that. Don't worry about it, just get some colour and put it out there. And in workshop, I say to people, um, to me it feels like claiming the canvas. You know, you start off with this white, virginal canvas, it's slightly scary perhaps, but put some marks on it. Get it, get it, you know, put colour on it.
SPEAKER_00Get something happening. Yeah. So both Rosemary and I do what we call flow drawing. Oh. And um what it is is you're just in the like, you know, have you heard of flow writing when you use it? Yeah, so it's the same thing. You're just in the moment and you're drawing them, and rosemary draws beautiful, beautiful pictures in her flow drawing. I draw, I I draw like doodles and swirls and patterns and beautiful. Nothing to do with that. But I always start on the page with the big one. Swirl. Claim that page.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's lovely. That's what it feels like. I I somehow feel as though making big marks to begin sets the feeling, sets the courage in place, or something like that. I know that many people, so many people, and this is not wrong because it works for many, it just doesn't work for me, um, but they have lots of gridding and they might start with careful drawing, and I admire that because they end up with absolutely magnificent work so often. Mine I think are more hit and miss, but I don't feel I have I just want to get into it. So I do like to start with biggish brushes and trying to put marks all over the canvas. It's just a different way to paint.
SPEAKER_00But it's also, I mean, you know, you think about when you're learning to draw and things like that, they give you exercises where you're just doing squiggles on the page, getting those big strokes in. I I think it's it's it is about cleaning the page.
SPEAKER_01Yes, it's getting a sort of an attitude going, somehow bold and generous or something.
SPEAKER_00It's like lots of platter in our podcast. Oh, this is well, it's all good. Yeah, we what did you call us, Rosemary?
SPEAKER_02We're authentically We got feedback that we're radically authentic, so now we're f we aim for that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so you know, we're not about you know No, not being all, you know, proper anywhere with prim and proper Okay, so we're looking at the portrait artist of the year now, um I you got a you got a message on Instagram and you thought it was a scam. Uh tell us about it. Tell us about your paintings and and um rosemary you'll love this because uh Ginny painted one of your favourite one of your favourite people, Dr. Carl. So uh uh Rosemary sent a book to Dr. Carl. And you literally phoned the bath and said, Thank you for sending me the book.
SPEAKER_01Oh, he's a lovely man. Yeah, he's wonderful. And his wife makes us exactly. And on the day that I painted him, he was wearing a wonderful, colourful shirt full of little pictures of Frida Kahlo. I don't know if it's going to paint. But the shirt was it was extraordinary. And I know, you know, this the sitter had the chance to choose a painting from one of the three people who were painting him, and he made an excellent choice. Chose, I can't I wish I could remember the artist's name. I can't, I hadn't met him before. But he did a lovely painting and he had quite good detail of the shirt. And you can clearly see the Frida Kahlo pattern as well as an excellent likeness of Dr. Carl. So he made a good choice there. I started big and bald, and uh, I think I surprised everybody the day I painted that because I put his head down low on the canvas and just kept uh swiping purple and stuff in for the they had a background of purple for Dr. Carl, something deep purple there. And anyway, that's a bit like out of space, dark blue, all of these colours you can imagine there. Yeah. Have you still got that painting?
SPEAKER_00Yes, and I'll show you soon.
SPEAKER_01Or we'll take a photo of it before it ends. But you you didn't you didn't Believe that it was actually like a real shop. I thought it was a scam because on media nowadays you get all sorts of little invitations and things coming in. Anyway, this was it was a very polite message from Endermall Shine, and I hadn't heard of that company, and I thought, sounds like a polish, car polish maybe. I hope they're not insulted by all of that. But anyway, I thought it it was an invitation to get in touch and so on. And I thought, oh, it's not real. And I just bypassed it. But then a week or so later, I saw advertisements in on Facebook pages, I think, within an art site, particularly a portrait painting site. And I thought, oh, well, maybe it is real. Perhaps I could find out. So I phoned the number on the not a scam message. And um that lovely lady, all of the people who work for Endermall Shine are just so nice, all the ones I met anyway, so nice, and she told me a bit about the show Portrait Artist of the Year and said it was based very much on the British model, which was which is great. I watched it many times. And so it continued from there. She arranged a Zoom meeting and I seemed to pass their tests. And then finally, early the next year, I got a phone call to say I was in. So excited. Wow. That's fantastic. That's fantastic. And then you won. I know. I went into that show feeling so lucky to be included. I had no thoughts of winning. I just wanted to do okay in the first round. I thought I don't want to, you know, lose my mojo or not be able to do anything. And so I didn't expect much of myself and all of these young and wonderful artists around. It was they were inspiring. And you know, it felt being like family, being with family of the artists. We're all a bit similar in ways, and there were so many partners. How we've never met before, but it was amazing. So you were so chill. I was chilled because I wasn't expecting anything. And I thought, well, if if I don't perform well, people will just think, she's just an old lady, you know. What do you expect? Because I am now. And um and so perhaps I didn't have the pressure on myself. Also, I didn't think my whole future could hang on this. Goodness, my future's a lot shorter than most of the would be. So they had a lot more hanging on it. But anyway, maybe that enabled me to relax. It was such such an interesting procedure because we didn't know who we were going to paint. We had no idea until the sitter walked out from behind a screen and suddenly was in front of us. We had a few minutes where we could have a little, well, maybe a minute, I don't know, it was pretty short. We could chat to the person, just you know, talk with them, and we were encouraged to take photos. That was a very good reason because there were so many interruptions for the sitter and to us as we were painting, um, that really we did need to rely a little on our photographs because the sitter would have a cameraman looking, you know, between between us, and um people would come and interview them or have a chat with them and come and chat to us. So we had it wasn't like doing a four-wall painting where you just had two people concentrating. Yeah, concentrating, very different. Yeah. But it was it was great fun.
SPEAKER_00So Roseme, do you want to ask a question about the winner painting of Kylie Kwang?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so after the show you painted Kylie Kuang for the National Portrait Gallery, and you created two versions as a parachute painting in case you missed one up. I did.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I saw it downstairs. Yes, yes, but something really important portraits to me, if it's of a real person, it's not just something because there's a difference. There are portraits painting real people, and paintings where I put a person in a landscape or something like that, that's different. That's flexible. But painting a portrait of a real person is important, or I have to get that likeness. And this being so important, and also I had to um have a GoPro camera filming me all of the time that I painted her portrait, just to prove it was me painting, I suppose. Um did you wear it on your head? I have to ask that. No, that's like a minus. Yeah, that could have been good. No, I I brought the GoPro camera home with me from Sydney the day I met Kylie there. We had about an hour together. It wasn't terribly long. It was a little bit of a shock actually, because where I met her was in a uh an old Chinese restaurant, and Kylie explained to me that it was important to her this place, and many, many places like it, because we're it's where Chinese families gather, where people get together, and you know, all of the age groups are there, and people can catch up on news and enjoy good food and that family gathering sort of feeling. And so that sort of that place was important to her. However, it was all white, it was bright fluorescent fluorescent lights. She was wearing a black or very dark blue uniform, a chef's uniform, and she had a very large decoration on her chest. It's made out of mother of pearl, and it was very, very important to her. She had it especially for the for the occasion. Um, and so there was so many contrasts that I wasn't used to, black, white, like white sort of thing. So I was a bit phased by all of that. But anyway, home I came with the camera and some photos I'd taken, and then I needed to paint a kylin. It was a big thing, so I had two big canvases waiting for me. I wanted it, uh it was I think it was over a metre, about a meter ten, maybe by eighty. I've forgotten now exactly. And I began boldly, as I've said before. I painted one canvas sort of a red, like a red ochre, red something like that, a natural earth colour anyway, and the other one with yellow ochre. And then later on during the process, I swapped colours and sort of so they each had this warm background, and I wanted that because Kylie herself is a very warm personality. Also, Australia is her home so much, even though she has a strong Chinese heritage and she loves the country and she loves what grows here and she uses as much as she can of the um edible indigenous foods. So all of I like these little connections in my painting. Not everybody might see them or even know they're there, but I do. And it feels better for me doing a painting. So yes, I had two paintings side by side, progressing about evenly for maybe two weeks, and then I had to choose. There wasn't much to choose between them, but I just chose one in the end and concentrated on that one, knowing that if something was dreadful, at least I had the second painting that had a good rendition of her face, the important part.
SPEAKER_00That's beautiful. You've just uh submitted an entry for the Archibald. I know that they've they've released the top 25 and you're not in it, but I still think it's worth talking and reflecting on the painting that you did of Carol Foster and why you did it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, thank you, thank you. Yes, I did want to enter the Archibald. I did once before about 12 years ago, but I wanted to enter it again, you know, while the iron's hot and all that. But anyway, I decided to paint Carol Foster, who's an art teacher of mine from long ago. She hasn't really taught me the way I paint, but I think she's taught me the attitude to painting and how to be an artist, which is sort of a different thing. And anyway, she's the most wonderful personality. She's vibrant and strong, and just strong, firm beliefs, wears colourful clothing, admire her. Our work is nothing we don't paint a like, you know, just admire her. Anyway, about two years ago, had a stroke and she was left with almost no eyesight. And she had been an artist for 50 years. She'd painted a lot about back Australia and then she'd lived in the the Alpine country and painted those scenes, and that's what she knew. But she was really she'd been selling, well, she'd been living back from her art all of this time, and suddenly she could not really see. As she described it to me, it was like looking down a tube to a grey evening. She couldn't really see colours and things. So um that was so terrible for her. But she had some very good friends and people who were helping her because gradually she came back to herself. She has actually started painting again. Because she's painted for so long, she knows exactly what colours are from the tubes or what to mix with what to get what. And she began, I think, by painting into some of her older works. Anyway, she's back to painting and she's got her joy back, which is just wonderful. And I thought this was extremely courageous, and that's what I wanted to paint for the Archibald. So I photographed Carol, sketched Carol, rough sketching, I must say, but that's how it began. And then I started painting, and I was very pleased with the way she turned out in the painting. Not with every part of the painting. I knew I wouldn't get into the top 25 of the Archibald or the final worsts anyway, because of the parts that didn't quite work. However, I was very pleased with the overall look of it, and I had her, I wanted to show her courage. So I got her standing proud the way she does. She almost looks, gosh, I don't know how she looks, but strong. She's got a strong face. She has her hair quite long now and dyed a rich red, and I have her holding a paintbrush like a torch, and she's wearing interesting clothing, lots of jewellery, she's got it all on, and the paintbrush in her hand. And the paintbrush is sort of like a torch, if you like, and it's lighting her face, her upper body, and a little bit of the background. And as a background, I've painted something similar to one of her paintings, one of the outback paintings, with the big sky and the sort of little aquary-coloured trees that she puts in and the red earths and red purple shadows, things like that. And then I have layers of her paintings or of canvases painted within or on my canvas, and I even painted the top of the easel. Oh, that's probably out of the picture. But anyway, the top of the easel, it's a good thing that holds the canvas in place. I painted that too. Anyway, I was very happy with it. Happy with 80% of it.
SPEAKER_00I will I will actually um get a photograph of you to put on the screen with that because I think it would be good for people to see it. Okay. I mean, I think there's hundreds of people who went to the archibald. Could be thousands. Yeah, by now, yeah. Yeah. So, you know. Yes. So just to enter, just to actually enter.
SPEAKER_01It takes courage. It does. And you yes, I I think this may be the only art show left in Australia, big one, where you have to actually send a painting to them. Because most nowadays will accept a digital image for them to decide whether they want to see it in your show. Yeah. But no, you have to deliver it to the archable.
SPEAKER_00Have you ever seen it, Rosemary? Oh, so what they do is they literally have guys walking past. So there's judges are sitting there, and people walk past the judges holding a painting like this. Walk it past and walk it past. And that's the view that they get, and then they say, We want to look at these 50 again, and they'll walk past again. And that's it. It's like literally a gut instinct of like, that's a good painting.
SPEAKER_01And I can see, in a way, I can see why they do that. Because the painting has to just grab their attention. It has to have something excellent about it. I think mine had something very good about it, but not it was not consistently that way. There's always next year, Jen. Yeah, there's next year, that's true. And possibly I mucked it off a little bit because, you know, I I didn't allow enough time to make errors and go back and really treat them properly. Because I decided that I would have shadow around the edge of the painting, um, with the light on Carol and her torque chip, you like her paintbrush. And so I'd bought charcoal powder to rub in around the edge, but it just didn't work. So I was wiping it off the night before and then painting it in, but my goodness, that's not the way to finish it. Next year I'll start it six months early. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, and then you know what you'll do. You start it six months early, night before you'll just change the whole thing and make your date.
SPEAKER_01It could happen, I know. With the coloured portrait, I finished it the night before. Yeah. I promised my husband that I'd finish it two weeks before, but no. No. The the creative process takes time. It does. And until they drag it away from you, you've always got more time.
SPEAKER_02Rosemary, now this is our final question. If you could give the 1970s Jenny, the young woman painting windowed edges in that dark shop, not yet knowing portrait was coming. One superpower for the journey ahead, what it would it be?
SPEAKER_01My goodness, I would have just encouraged her to keep going, don't give up, and not to worry about it, not to take it too seriously. Paint like a five-year-old. Yes, at least for the star. You do need to change if you're going to paint a more well, I don't really paint true realism, but it's heading a little bit that way. That's why I ended up painting portraits, I think, because I wanted the challenge. That's it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's beautiful. And Jenny, thank you so much for your time today. I think that you will inspire a lot of our people because as we've said previously, women make sacrifices for their family. It's it's it's it's within us to actually, we're carers, we're nurturers, and we make sacrifices. And you've made sacrifices for your family out throughout your life, and yet you've come out on top. And and that will partially be to the support you have around your wonderful loving husband and family. Yes, so it goes both ways.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and I really think that that's just part of being in a family. I really do. Everybody makes sacrifices. Yes, and to have something like painting, which is all absorbing, which is completely absorbing, yes. You you have to balance life, you have to balance your life, that's what it is. Even though you might have a great passion. But now I feel as I can pretty much just paint almost when I want because I have the time now. I'm finally at this stage. Like that's good.
SPEAKER_02What a beautiful story. Thank you so much. It's been a wonderful time. Uh thank you, Michelle. Wow, Michelle, that was amazing, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_00It was, I call her a national living treasure. She's just amazing. She is and such wisdom. What what did you what were your key points of learning?
SPEAKER_02Yes, well, I love that strategy of claiming the page, just claim the page. And um, in my status as an emerging artist who's very, very emerging, actually, I do that with my flow drawings. Jenny said the blank page, but yeah, so much wisdom in her work.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, it was wonderful, wasn't it? It was really wonderful to talk to her. And I found that I actually loved what she said about the Australian lights. I think that um a lot of people consider our light very harsh, but I think it brings things into relief. And having travelled throughout the world and come back to Australia, I too get a thrill of seeing the light when I come back. So for me that was very inspiring to talk to another artist who looks at the light in Australia in such a positive way.
SPEAKER_02Yes, I love our light, Australia's light. So, what's been inspiring you this week, Rosemary? Right, I have from the Red Hand Files, we um issue 365, May 2026, Nick Nick Um Cave. And I love this, this relates to you, Michelle. Nick responding to someone who's written to him, he says, I know in my heart that there is one thing more daunting than writing a song. It's not writing a song. And I think we can apply this to many things. A job undone is its own torment, a dream unrealised is its own hell. There is unique joy, the deepest satisfaction, and a kind of spiritual appeasement in knowing that something we have made or worked on means something to somewhat else, as you experienced, Michelle, recently at a market. He says, live as creatively and boldly as your heart allows. Yeah, that's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00That's actually beautiful. I the other night am inspired by the fact I was watching um a movie, a very old movie, I was watching Sister Act 2, where um Whoopi Goldberg is talking to someone about whether they are a singer or not. And she talks about letters from a poet written to another writer. And in this, that the writer says to this young poet, if you wake up every morning and all you want to do is put your words on paper, you are a writer. You're already a writer. And I think, and she was applying it to the this young girl singing. But to me, the same thing comes across. If you wake up every morning and the first thing that goes through your head is what creations that you want to make, yeah, you are an artist. You're already there, whether you've made any work or not, you're already on that road. So, and I think for me that was very inspiring because we often struggle, and especially as women, we have to make many sacrifices in our life for our artwork, and we struggle with our own belief, self-belief. And we shouldn't. If you're out there creating, you're already on the journey. So never give up on you, which is very similar to what you're saying today, Rosemary.
SPEAKER_02So there you go. There you go.
SPEAKER_00Great, everyone, thank you very much, and we'll see you next time.
SPEAKER_02Great, thank you, Michelle.
SPEAKER_00Rosemary. Bye-bye. Thank you so much for listening to Shift Stirrers Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit that follow button so you can get notified whenever we release new content. We'd love to hear feel from you and feel free to reach out to us at theshift stirrers at gmail.com or you can find our individual email addresses and websites in the show notes below. We love questions. You can also connect to us on Instagram at ShiftStirrers. If you found value in today's conversation, we'd be incredible, incredibly grateful if you could leave us a review or a rating on your podcast platform. It really helps others to discover the show. And if you know someone who will benefit from this episode, please share with them. Until next time, keep stirring the shift. Just a quick disclaimer Michelle and Rosemary are not experts in any of these discussions today. We present this podcast in the interest of getting you curious to make changes. Thank you.