As a top student at Orange High in the 1960s, local creative, Wanda Driscoll, was told she was: “too smart for art”.

Decade’s later, her love, passion, and outright enthusiasm for all things visual, has passed the test of time after a lifelong career as one of the region’s most prolific and diverse painters.

Her new exhibition at the Artwork Orange Gallery in Lords Place, highlights the range and virtuosity of her work, ranging from oils to acrylics, watercolours to mixed media, with a special demonstration of her craft thrown in for attendees this Australia Day Long Weekend.

For Wanda, it all started at school when she was rejected trying to take creative classes as an elective by an unsympathetic teacher, before moving straight into an allied field upon graduation.

“They said I wasn’t good enough to do art; although I got ‘A’s in visual art, English, history, they said I was ‘too intelligent’ to do something else,” Wanda recalled while setting up her new show.

“When I finished my Leaving Certificate, I wanted to paint, so I went into the Drawing, Planning, and Design Office at Email (Electrolux) as a sign writer and design tracer,” she added.

Later, setting up shop, Wanda made a career for herself at a time when most women were expected to marry young and start having children.

“I started in ticket writing (for temporary ‘on sale’ signs) and a signwriting business locally.

“It was in Orange first, and then for stores like David Jones in Sydney,” she revealed.

After two decades, she rediscovered her appetite for more creative areas of expression, a desire she retains to this day.

“It was about 1985 when I joined Orange Art Society after teacher, Bob Millis, came to town; that was when I really started doing acrylics and oils, and I enrolled at Orange TAFE for a Diploma of Art.

“I’m obsessed with getting light and depth into a painting and lots of colour, Impressionist, but much more as well,” Wanda explained.

This, gallery owner Dennis Mead, believes, is one of her unique qualities, and one which attendees can witness first-hand over this weekend.

“Wanda is the most diverse painter we have in here, whether it’s impressionism, drawing, landscapes,” Dennis enthused.

“She’ll also be here on Sunday (January 25) from 2–5pm, putting on a demonstration as she works, as well as on the Australia Day Monday at the same times,” he added.

Wanda however, revealed, that her versatility over a range of mediums involved a lot of learning and a love of new challenges in her craft, drawing inspiration from her travels around Australia.

“I didn’t start doing watercolours until about 1990 when Sue Burstall taught me how to paint in them.

“It opened my eyes like seeing daylight for the first time… now I do oils, acrylics, watercolours, and mixed media; drawings in black-and-white, landscapes, sketches, abstract, there’s about 50 works in this exhibition,” Wanda said proudly.

Often volunteering her time to teach seniors and the disabled the wonders of visual art, she adds, reveals also the importance of the imaginative processes to all of us.

“Art is calming and refreshing, it teaches them to think on the creative side of their brain.

“I often donate my time to the handicapped, the elderly, and you just see how it lights their eyes up… one fella comes with his carer, and it clicks in his mind, and off he goes!”

Wanda’s exhibition at 241 Lords Place is the culmination of a lifetime’s commitment to the imaginative, going back all the way to the mid-1960s and a girl who just wanted to paint.

“I thank Dennis for my first chance to have a comprehensives exhibition of all my works at one time,” Wanda enthused.

“I’ve had a great time doing it, I’m just helping people to enjoy their art; it’s a fun life.”