Leanne Shawler, Artist

I still can't show you the 4th portrait, but I finished the 5th portrait in a couple of days. I forgot to put the lid back onto the wet palette and all the paint drying out kind of forced my hand. But she was already done, thank goodness. I got inspired by an article in my home town paper, The Newcastle Herald . It was mostly about some coal company giving a small country town funds to improve infrastructure (with the associated drama). They spoke to local residents of Sandy Hollow and one of them was an artist. He'd done a mosaic of one of the valley's legendary souls, a "lady bushranger", she was called, even though she was active in the early twentieth century, after most the reign of most bushrangers. (She stole cattle, mostly.) The Herald quotes the artist, David Mahoney : His naked mosaic of a stylised Hickman, displayed at his Sandy Hollow gallery, was designed to “give the Lady Bushranger a little bit of status and make her look a little sensuou...