About Me

Where I grew up, in country Victoria, I could see Corner Inlet and Wilsons Promontory from the back veranda. My primary school was on top of a little mountain, where I and a handful of other pupils learned as much from our environment as from our teacher (it was a single teacher school). We learned science from the bush, maths with the rainwater, politics & ethics from each other, and aesthetics from the landscape & its inhabitants. My mother, now retired, was a primary school teacher, my father (also now retired) who had been a boiler maker/welder, became an aromatherapist and massage practitioner while I was in high school. I was drawn to Art, Philosophy, Psychology, and Biology, and I began a Psychology degree when I left home for the city.

Halfway through my first year of university, I took a leap of faith and enrolled instead in art school. It was there that I found people who, like myself, were learning about themselves, the role of artists as recorders and reflectors of our world and their time. We were seeking to develop our own way of representing ourselves and others, our fears and dreams, our hopes and inspirations. In my last year of art school my mother was diagnosed with cancer. My brother was studying for VCE at the time, and my sister pregnant with her first child. It was a very difficult time for my family, and it marked the moment I started to look outwardly, developing an understanding of responsibility beyond the self. 

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I spent my early twenties, as many of us do, trying to find my place in the world.  Living in inner Northern Melbourne warehouses and sharehouses, I met creatives and scholars, painted almost constantly, learned to play guitar and found my voice.  My mother, by this stage, was in remission. Later, I met and married a brilliant musician, we had a gorgeous son, I became a stay-at-home-mum, my husband an IT architect. The marriage ended when our son was 3 years old and I found myself in the uncertain situation of being a single parent.

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Starting from scratch, I worked in the community, art and health sectors and eventually realised that my seemingly disparate array of interests, skills and attributes positioned me beautifully to begin a path of healing.  I embarked on a Degree of Clinical Myotherapy and began practising massage. 

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If you visit The Treatment Room, you will see my artwork on the walls and perhaps spot my guitar on its stand. The creative practice and the healing practice are, I believe, deeply connected.