Artwork by Judith Durling
… As a child, my biggest desire was to have a blackboard so that I could write and draw upon it. My interest in painting was given birth when one of my brothers brought home tubes of oil paint along with a brush picked up in a second hand store and said “these are for you”. That was exciting for me.
The second glimmer of hope for me in art was when my high school art teacher told me my paintings were “way ahead of time” and urged me to continue my skills in college. Art College never happened, you see, as I was born into a very poor family, and the future of a girl such as I was to get married, have children, and be a good wife, if I were lucky. …
