Chris Marshall

Visual artist, mainly mixed media and digital art, living in Perth, Western Australia. Member of the Webism Group of World-Wide Artists.

I was born in the UK in 1949 and migrated to Australia with my family in 1965. In 1999 by father died of cancer just 14 weeks after first diagnosed. I had been working hard, travelling away a lot and probably had not been taking much notice of what was happening around me. My father’s death made me reassess my own life. Shortly afterwards my husband and I went to Broome in the north of Western Australia for a few days and, whilst walking on Cable Beach I remarked how, if a person was at all creative, the colours of the Kimberley were absolutely inspirational; they made you want to paint. He said “Why don’t you?”. I said all the usual stuff about couldn’t draw a straight line etc but he said “Just do it”, and that started me thinking “why not?”

So … I took up art as my New Year's resolution for the new millenium having worked in Information Technology for many years. My first art teacher used to take us ‘out and about”, teaching perspective by looking down the street or out to sea; he taught me to see (really see), to feel the colours and told me to immerse myself in art – it was a completely life-changing experience for me; the blinkers fell from my eyes and I have never looked back