Brick wall in Pambula gets much needed facelift with beautiful Terri Tuckwell mural

The completion of Terri Tuckwell's mural has completed the second stage of a $50,000 art project funded through by Foundation for Rural and Regional Renewal, which helped to adorn Pambula Village in colourful murals.

Previous works were completed in 2022 by Indigenous artist Cheryl Davison on Wild Rye's wall, Millingandi artist Ann Brosnan on Bendigo Bank's ATM wall, Nicki Hall on the Commercial Hotel, and Simon Thomas on Goldfinch.

"When COVID came I got a bit of a wriggle and did a Bar Beach drawing series and I said, 'Right, I've found my passion again, I'm going to do that'," Teltale Art's Ms Tuckwell said.

"But as soon as the COVID restrictions started to ease, I was kind of back into the old habits."

A few months later, in October 2020, Ms Tuckwell received a cancer diagnosis, which would fundamentally change her whole perspective.

"Once you have gone through something like that, then you go 'okay, time is really precious'.

"And now I am really about doing more art and making time, whereas before it was always something else," Ms Tuckwell, who is now cancer free, said.

"And I think lots of parents do it, you focus on your children.

"It's not at the exclusion or detriment of others. You've done lots of stuff for family and all those other things, and you get to a point and think, 'Yeah, it's time to do something else, [something for me].'"

Inspired by a compilation of what Ms Tuckwell thinks her two-year old niece Savannah will look like and the ethereal Panboola Wetlands, the artwork was originally captured in pastels before being projected and painted in the mural form.

READ ALSO:

Within a room of the dental surgery in which Ms Tuckwell works, the framed original pastel leaned against a wall, small handwritten labels attached to mark the ideal colours for the larger mural, from pale rust hair to mushroom whip clothing, towering pine reeds to blanched taupe ropes.

During painting, she placed a weight on the end of a piece of string and dropped it to ensure the ropes of the swings were straight and appeared taunt and loadbearing.

Two accidental paint drips also found a new lease on life.

"They were paint drips that fell and they looked like insects, so I put wings on them," she said as she looked towards the righthand side of the swing.

"I've really enjoyed it, it was so much more fun. I thought that scale would be stressful, but I just really enjoyed it."