“I Cannot Imagine Life Without Art”

Throughout her story you can feel the delight and joy that radiates from this artist as she describes her passion for art.

- Ellen Lee Osterfield

Another rainy day, another chance to stay indoors and draw and paint! Any excuse would do for an 8-year-old whose only desire was to be “an artist when I grow up”!

Well, almost 48 years later I still have the same passion to paint and draw as I believe I was born with! My father was a house painter and good at sketching and colour mixing. I accredit him with my colour mixing ability. I became very excited every time he was going into the shed to mix paint. He had a container filled with bottles of stainers (concentrated colour) and time after time I watched as he painstakingly mixed and matched colours, adding a little bit of blue here and a tiny speck of red there. He could match a wall colour years after it had been painted and achieve the same tone. I must have kept my parents poor buying me sketchbooks and coloured pencils in my younger days!

I was keen to test my own colour mixing and matching skills. My first subjects were cartoon characters and the gum trees in our neighbourhood. Regular holidays to the Murray and Murrumbidgee Rivers were an artist’s delight; trees with character, reflections, sunsets, native bird life etcetera fanned the flame of an already burning passion to create! I was born and raised in Bendigo in central Victoria (where I still live with my husband and son) but when I was a teenager my parents decided to take their family on a working holiday around Australia. So just like “my dad”! I too fell in love with the landscape, the flora and fauna! Every vista was a painting waiting to happen!