How Rebecca's Dolls Came to Life

It feels strange to think of now because my mum, Rebecca, has painted everything – paintings, murals, every item of clothing possible, instruments, any large, flat public surface, bathroom walls, water tanks – but there was a phase in her life where she couldn’t paint. In 1994 Rebecca’s dad, my grandad, William, passed away, and right after she found herself unable to paint with the ease she used to. Such moments aren’t that uncommon for artists of all sorts during the course of their lives – grief is a choppy thing, a burning steel ball that’s impossible to swallow, and it can make our base levels of existence, let alone anything above that like making art, almost too painful to inhabit.

But in it she still wanted to do something. Try as she might, she couldn’t paint, but she still wanted to move her hands – and she could still sew. And so this was where her art went in that time – the hours spent in front of an easel now spent in front of her sewing machine, patching together fabrics, building clothes, limbs, bodies. These would then be painted with her signature face, creating pieces which turned out to be almost a three dimensional extension of her painted work – the women stepping off the canvases and occupying space in the room. These have gone on to become some of Rebecca’s most beloved and collectible works, adorning many houses around Australia and the world.

Her ability to paint of course returned, and as the years went on she found that expanding her output to include more and more things to create was key to her artistic life. This is why there is so much variation now – life contains countless seasons, and Rebecca simply wants to do something among all of them.

- Sukita.