Tasmanian volunteer, 91, hoping to head to Territory

Alice Springs is calling artist Vita Brown who, at 91 years of age, thinks she’s likely to be the oldest participant at Regional Arts Australia’s national conference art at the heart in October. A practising artist for most of her life, Ms Brown is an active member of local arts groups, paints most days and hopes to travel to Alice Springs as a delegate.

“I haven’t been to any other of the Regional Arts Australia conferences, so this will be a first for me,” Ms Brown says. “It will be quite a gathering of different types of artists and I feel each of us can acquire something from each other.”

She says that Triabunna on Tasmania’s east coast, where she has lived for the past 38 years, is an industrial area and she and others have worked hard to introduce an artistic life. Her work featured in Tasmanian Living Artists’ Week last year and she is an honorary life member of Tasmanian Regional Arts.

“I am lucky that even though I am 91 years old, I still have brilliant eyesight. My work at the moment is looking at the movement of colour on water, waterfalls in particular,” she says.

“But I live in an old farm house with a studio and it’s got to the stage where I can hardly fit into it any more, it’s so full of art. I need a shed,” she says.

Many of the projects in this newsletter have been supported by the Regional Arts Fund, an Australian Government initiative supporting the arts in regional, remote and very remote/isolated Australia.

Regional Arts Australia promotes the development of the arts for the one-in-three Australians who live in regional, rural and remote parts of the country. Our members give country Australians access to outstanding cultural experiences that are either home grown or tour from other towns and cities. In this way, Regional Arts Australia gives a voice to artists and puts culture at the heart of community life across country Australia.