Art

Over the decades Sheila wanted to draw and paint - so she taught herself. First with insect drawing as cameras were expensive to use. Sheila use to breed and normally release butterflies and moths, keeping one or two for their Natural History collection, but she wanted to do more. So she worked as a volunteer collector for the CSIRO collection in Canberra with Dr Ted Edwards and Ian Common. She collected micro moths and stored product moths - helping discover various new and still unnamed species. She loved caterpillars that she found in the garden and knew that the parasites were stopping many from reaching maturity, so she started breeding and releasing them! This also gave her a fabulous opportunity to dray and paint them...

Sheila also had always dabbled in landscape painting and since high school had been good at the drawing, so she started to add colour. She fell in love with Oil Painting. She tried Still life, but it did not grab her as nature did. Over the years, many other artists showed her their skills and I was able to join her on some of the lessons. John Shields attempted to teach us both but only Sheila was able to capture the mist and water skill that he had. Her water was so well done , you wanted to sit on the creek and dangle you feet in the water.