Fine art — as with many home-focussed elements of our lives — had a pretty good lockdown.

Local painter Rhonda Campbell recently held her first public exhibition at Orange Regional Gallery with a collection of her Brett Whitely-ish paintings of paddocks, trees, and season-inspired works in response to a recent residency in the Monaro region.

Finding that now is her time, Rhonda’s success though, has been no overnight triumph.

From sketching schoolchild to full-time artist has involved a near 60-year journey for the former local schoolteacher, wife, mother, and businesswoman.

Rhonda’s lifelong love of fine art began with a special gift as a child before she went to school locally.

“I’ve always loved sketching, my father brought me a Derwent’s 72’s set of pencils with an amazing range of colours.

“I grew up at Parkes, but I’ve been here 50-years, I went to PLC (Presbyterian Ladies College, now part of Kinross Wolaroi School) and then to the National Art School in Sydney,” she added.

Like many an aspiring artist, she also completed a degree in Education and ended up teaching art both here and overseas.

“I taught for five years at Parkes High School, Narrabri, and then in London at East Finchley.

“I came back here and taught a couple of years at Kinross Wolaroi, and then I started a boutique here in 1975.”

While running a specialist retail outlet might appear an incongruous expression for her creative talents, Rhonda was able to utilise her fine art background in her business.

“I ran La Bottega for 25 years in Byng Street, I loved it. I was applying the knowledge that I had of design and colour knowledge to the shop… to my buying of the clothes and accessories.

“(Fashion legend) Carla Zampatti said to me: ‘you’re a frustrated designer — you should be designing dresses’.

As clothes became more casual, Rhonda took the store in another direction where she was again able to apply her art training.

“In the later time in the shop, I changed it into homewares, so I started to design a range of wrought-iron furniture, which was another outlet for my colour and design training.”

Rhonda returned to her first love, however, when she retired in 2000.

“I always had a plan to take up the paint-brush again… this studio was built for me to go onto the next phase of my life.

“I’ve also got a print-making studio behind the garage… I also do collagraphs, dry point etching, and chine-colle [collages].”

As with her career, her art has also evolved over the years; a necessity for her craft, she believes.

“I’m always changing, you have to keep changing or you don’t evolve,” she added.

“This was my first major exhibition at a public gallery, I sold over half of them,” she said.

The event was, in one sense, a return to public showings for Rhonda.

Her painting proved a release from the last two years caring for her partner, Bob during a long-term illness until his death last year.

“I haven’t got stuff out to the galleries due to nursing my husband, but I thank my lucky stars that I had my art to do.”

Rhonda says that our unique landscape is the inspiration for much of her eclectic work.

“Impressions are what I do, I love going out and working in the plain air. The Australian landscape and outback are my inspiration.

I’ve travelled to the Kimberley, Pilbara, the Tanami Desert, Lake Eyre. I love the colours, of being out there, the space.”

Rhonda’s tactile senses are heightened by her use of a range of homemade “brushes” made out of whatever organic odds and ends she finds.

“I use different brushes to give different markings. I use seed heads, coconut fibre, bits of string, twigs, feathers…this is a bit of aloe vera,” she explained.

With most galleries shut for near-on two years, Rhonda found like builders and decorators, that house-bound people turn to home for new projects.

“I actually sold a lot during COVID — people didn’t have other things to spend their money on, and they suddenly looked around and saw a blank wall in their homes that were perfect for a picture,” Rhonda concluded.