THE Eurobodalla Show is an opportunity for Moruya’s Dallas Smart to display something which has changed his life.
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At 77, he will enter the show for the first time, with four of his landscape paintings.
Rather than just nice images, the paintings are what has helped him through dark times.
“I had spine surgery, which was followed by chronic pain and depression,” he said.
“Depression is a violent old disease, but painting has helped me through it.”
“When I paint, and I become involved in the painting and not on anything else, and I feel a lot better.”
Dallas describes himself as a “very amateur” painter, and while it is a fairly new hobby, he is no stranger to paint brushes.
“I come from a farming community in Griffith, and my Dad was a house painter, so I was born with a paint brush instead of a dummy,” he said.
The idea of taking up artistic painting had been in his mind a long time.
“It was not that I didn’t want to do it, but I would look at paintings and think ‘I can’t do that; I couldn’t draw a deep breath, let alone a scene’,” he said.
Talking to Moruya mouth painter Margaret Greig kept his interest going.
“I don’t expect to even come close to winning a prize, but having my paintings at the show gives me a bit of heart, and that someone might have a look at them and like them."
- Dallas Smart
“I know her well and she gives me advice on what is good enough,” he said.
Then came his surgery and subsequent depression, and after this, he decided to make a go of it.
“I made a studio out of my back verandah, got some hints off the internet and started painting,” he said.
“I showed Margaret some of my paintings and she thought they were pretty reasonable and asked ‘why don’t you enter the Eurobodalla Show?.’
“My daughter does photography and she enters the show, so it made me think again and I entered.
“The show is a good environment where you can gain a lot of inspiration.”
Most of Dallas’s paintings are landscapes depicting rural scenes, and he is entering four in the show.
“I like rivers in the bush, with old houses and shearing sheds,” he said.
“There’s a lot of the lifestyle of the community I grew up in the paintings.
“I don’t expect to even come close to winning a prize, but having my paintings at the show gives me a bit of heart, and that someone might have a look at them and like them,” he said.
