As soon as I heard that the Flying Arts School had formed I promptly enrolled and Mervyn and Helen (Mervyn's wife) put my enrollment up on their wall because it was the first one they had received. To begin with Mervyn came by car because I don't think he had his pilot's licence at that stage. He finally got his pilot's licence and I had the class all ready and the hall booked and no Mervyn - they couldn't make it. This happened occasionally until he got going.

I always remember him saying that the tutors couldn't make artists out of us, we had to do that ourselves. He said he could only teach us how to handle materials and how to use brushes and paints and mix colours. We never saw much of Mervyn's work - ever, because he felt he shouldn't influence people and that they had to develop their own style. This was a very important lesson to me about recognising that we were individual people so our work should be individual as well. I eventually became more abstract. I really like a challenge. I learnt from the Flying Arts School that you can go out on a limb and be yourself.

A crowd of women used to go picking beans for pin money and then we'd hop on a plane and go to Brisbane and go on a gallery crawl. That's how we got to see art in the galleries. Occasionally we'd trip over a painting of Mervyn's or Roy Churchers but we were absorbing it all. My wallum paintings were very free, I don't describe them as abstract because they represent the bush. I used to often walk through the wallum. There was a wallum park and it was lovely to walk through. Little sandy paths and the bush coming in close around you and you'd have to push through it and you'd find little wildflowers.

When my work changed and became more abstract Mervyn made me understand that I was responding emotionally. I was just doing it, but he gave it a name - abstract expressionism. Then I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing and I let the emotion come out. My abstract work was very free and loose and now it is more considered. I think there is more spirituality and soul in my work. I still have freedom but it has more order. This can be seen in the work I exhibited this year in the Bundaberg Art Gallery.

Now I just want to get my work out and about and have it become more known. I exhibited in Sydney for eight years and then Bundaberg but my work is not that well known in Brisbane.