Precious Pets

An accomplished art tutor and former President of the Ringwood Art Society, Nola Clark expresses her love for domestic animals by creating beautiful pictures of them.

- Trevor Lang

Nola Clark has a few early-school day recollections which include ‘being the smallest girl in school’. She also has a fond memory of regularly topping the class for drawing and sketching.

As a child she can’t remember having many toys, but vividly recalls having plenty of kids’ paints, coloured pencils and loads of paper and Spirax sketchbooks.

Nola’s early forays into art clearly laid the foundation for a successful and fulfilling art career … even if it did take another thirty years to crystallise her interest into a serious and pleasurable pastime.

Marriage, motherhood and mortgages were her prime concerns until the late seventies when husband Alan began rummaging through old boxes and drawers and located many examples of Nola’s drawing activities from her school days.

Alan was astonished that his wife of 16 years had such a talent. To Nola’s delight, her future birthday and Christmas gifts provided lots of art-related goodies including pastels, oils, acrylics and a variety of brushes and canvas.

Her husband’s alertness at that time had an early (if unusual) reward, when a carpet representative spotted Nola’s work and offered to carpet a room in exchange for an oil painting of his own horse.