Amanda Penrose Hart

To draw and paint is a strange yet humbling occupation. The only job where you work happily and often don’t get any regular salary! To paint is to unravel, deconstruct, explore and repack the truth. To look isn’t to see – to see is what is most important – sounds obvious but to see is everything. My studio sits on a hill in a small town called Sofala (near Bathurst) – Russel Drysdale country. He made the town ‘famous’ with his series of paintings, The Cricketers’. The dirt road featured, now covered with bitumen, but the Pub still stands. The town isn’t much bigger than it was in the 1850s, when it was erected, but the locals exude the same warmth. Other painters that have worked there include Donald Friend, Brett Whiteley and John Olsen. I like to walk in good company.