THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 This is a painting of a super can. I do this in Thom\u2019s way, instead of doing a nose, I do a hand nose or foot nose<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY, STUDIO A:\u00a0Thom is a man of many interests and he’s a man who’s very curious about the world<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 This train is called Freddy and they got phased out by the way.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 He paints people as trains, people as towers. He loves infrastructure and he personifies infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Some of the really reoccurring motifs in Thom’s work are things like multiple eyes and piano keys for teeth.<\/p>\n
He’s been a finalist in the Archibald Prize four times now,<\/p>\n
Thom is one of the artists at Studio A. We provide professional development for artists with intellectual disability. So we work to put in the right supports so that really talented artists like Thom can perform in the in the mainstream contemporary art world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 I want to thank everybody for coming tonight to see my Thom Roberts in my big gallery.<\/p>\n
Kermit the frog is just over here. Everyone\u2019s here.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Sky Fox, Jumbo Junior.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 Thom always renames people that he meets.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 I name you Steam.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hi Kayla.\u00a0<\/p>\n
KATERINA:\u00a0 My real name Katerina.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 This is Kylie Panther<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0Every now and then, he’ll meet a lady and he’ll call her Mrs Staveley. And in amongst all these other names, I’ve always found this a particularly intriguing name.<\/p>\n
Whenever you ask Thom something like why do you paint four eyes? Who’s Mrs Staveley? His common answer is ohh, I don’t know. I do it Thom’s way.<\/p>\n
And then one day Mrs Staveley turns up at Studio A.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 I’m Mrs Staveley and I was Thom’s teacher many years ago. In fact, 40 years ago.<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 Ah, there\u2019s me. I feel shocked. She was my primary school teacher back in 1983.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She used to have jet black hair. Now it\u2019s more like this colour and she\u2019s in her 90s.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 I saw one of the mothers of one of the children who’d been at school, and they said I believe Thom’s doing a lot of beautiful artwork and he greeted me as a long-lost friend<\/p>\n
For me, it was extremely emotional. I loved that little boy.<\/p>\n
Who is the boy at the end with his head back there?<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 Thom!\u00a0<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 They were fun days, Thom weren\u2019t they?<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 Yes!<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 They were fun days.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 The next thing Thom was saying can I paint to you for the Sulman Prize and Thom knows that the Sulman Prize is a big deal. So I think in the language of Thom he\u2019s saying, you are a big deal to me.<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 He sketched me that afternoon and took a couple of photographs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 We all thought that Thom was going to do a traditional portrait with piano teeth and four eyes and a foot for a nose. In typical Thom style, that is not quite what happened.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 I named her Mrs Picture Book<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 Thom wanted to represent Mrs Picture Book as a picture book. And he also wanted to turn her into a kind of revised, reimagined Goldilocks – a 92-year-old Goldilocks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 And it was accepted in the finals of the of the Sulman.<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 Oh look, look, look, look. Oh, I look Thom, I love it. I just love it. Here I am with piano teeth and several eyes and a nose that has a hand at the end of it. But it’s me. He\u2019s captured me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s wonderful. It\u2019s wonderful. I\u2019m so proud of you, I really am. It\u2019s wonderful. It\u2019s wonderful. And all the paintings you do of people is wonderful.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0Chromehurst school at Lindfield<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0What\u2019d you like best?<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 You.<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0Thank you. Thank you that\u2019s lovely.<\/p>\n
GABRIELLE MORDY:\u00a0 Mrs Stavely made Thom feel important, Mrs Stevely made Thom feel loved at school and he has been remembering her ever since.<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 Poor old lady has to go slowly.<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 You used to walk faster.<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 I used to walk fast.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He tells me he’s going to go on painting till he’s an old man and then as an aside, he said you’ll be dead but I’ll go on painting and I think, well, you’re absolutely right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thom has an ability to process things so wonderfully and if you go to his exhibition and you don’t come out feeling joyful and happy, there’s something wrong with you.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thank you, Thom, for painting that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 No problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n
JUDITH STAVELEY:\u00a0 No problem, no problem at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"THOM ROBERTS:\u00a0 This is a painting of a super can. I do this in Thom\u2019s way, instead of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36311,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[32877,11480,449,458,459,64,63,460,134,32876,32878,32875],"class_list":["post-36310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-archiald-prize","tag-art","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-judith-staveley","tag-painter","tag-thom-roberts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36310\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}