By GreyMatterStudio
In fact, we know how it can flourish into full bloom opulence and take on new branches of life and experiences. For Maureen Prichard, it’s no different.
Right from when she was a child, Maureen has been watching, learning and crafting her way, even producing her first painting on China at just three years old.
Inspired by her Grandmother Dot, a talented China painter herself, Maureen spent most of her working adult life as a teacher and illustrator, however there is more to “life” than work as we know.
From a gem of a thought when turning 70, Maureen has made threads that weave and grow into handy new skills, simply by turning the mind to challenge herself each year. In 2018, the year she celebrated her 70th birthday, Maureen started by entering her first dressmaking competition (she won), which meant she had to walk in a fashion parade for the first time.
What followed are the proud badges worn against each following year: from first showcasing her dotandmimi brand at artisan markets; to first time post-retirement curating a SALA exhibition (“Sight Specific”); to a first garden design which brings more blooms, fragrances and vibrant colour into her life; to, in 2024, finally joining an artists’ collective (T’Arts).
You can’t teach this attitude to life … or can you?
Fresh out of the South Australian School of Art in the 1960s having studied “advertising art” (now graphic design), Maureen was enticed into a career teaching art by the nuns at Cabra Dominican College. She had a long career as an arts educator culminating in the role of Principal Lecturer, Visual Arts at Adelaide College of the Arts.
To digress, the story of Cabra began in 1206 when St Dominic established a convent for women in Prouille, France. It is perhaps coincidence the first story shared by Maureen was a reflection from a trip to Paris to visiting L’Hotel Paris where Oscar Wilde died reportedly declaring, “This wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. Either it goes or I do.”
We are sitting in her architecturally designed sunroom, overlooking her garden, which has been personalised and decorated with stunning fabric covers, upholstery and furnishings, along with her cherished art and memorabilia. Her flowers are in their favourite vase with petals scattered in an artistic abandon that only seems real because of the house that surrounds us.
Teaching art was not Maureen’s first choice of career as she had always wanted to be a practitioner. But it is a career which she still cherishes in part through the connections that remain with students to this day. Over time, she would be best known as an illustrator through Australian publishers such as Wakefield Press, McPhee Gribble, Allen & Unwin and Penguin, and, unsurprisingly, absolutely loved teaching illustration whenever the opportunity arose.
Maureen remains inspired through her informed research interest in medieval manuscripts and the design and illustration of private press books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Book illustration and decoration, and investigations into the image-text relationship in which hand lettering plays an important role, are central to her main body of work.
We chat about her new creative passion which is in part a response to the Oscar Wilde opulence she found herself in during that holiday in Paris, and also aligns with her research into the work of William Morris and the Arts & Crafts Movement, as well as the Bloomsbury Group.
The soft furnishings, particularly her lamp shades, are all designed and made with loving detail, explicitly selected fabrics and a knack for combining colours and patterns which would enhance any setting. Simply put, they are stunning – and will soon be on display in her first “artist window” in May at T’Arts Collective.
We ask how Maureen keeps inspired and what she does to stay active and mindful…
Maureen enthusiastically speaks about her “first garden design” (one of her more recent projects) and so we wander down the back yard. She takes us to an area behind a laser cut wall structure, made by her brother, Gavin Murphy, based on a portrait of Maureen by Nova Smith one of her TAFE students, to view the new rambling but structured hidden garden. We smell the glorious combination of geraniums, cosmos, roses and frangipani. Each planting seeming to have a story of its own that brings a flood of memories to share.
Just as the garden flourishes through thoughtful care and attention, we learn that Maureen nurtures her own well-being through regular private Pilates sessions. A long-time yoga practitioner, she now finds Pilates offers the extra focus on strength that she values as she ages. Much like tending to her garden, Pilates fosters a connection between mind and body, grounding her while enhancing the resilience and agility she needs to continue her art practice with confidence.
This is a life of meaning, rich with delicate illustrations and tiny stitches in fabric, of colour and fragrance carried on a breeze, and of a relaxed, almost bohemian design that ties it all together in harmony.
We are excited to see what future instalments Maureen brings next into our world through her label @dotandmimi. Her designs can be purchased from the “T’Arts Collective” in Gay’s Arcade, Adelaide.
