Christine Audrey Pecket (1908–1996), artist, was three years old when her family emigrated to Sydney from Yorkshire. Two years after arriving in Australia, Pecket contracted polio, which left her partially paralysed and reliant on crutches and leg braces for the rest of her life. Despite this and being from a large, working-class family with little interest in art, Pecket was determined to become an artist. 'Disabilities are supposed to take everything from life, to leave it hollow and empty,' she said in a 1937 interview, 'but they don't. They make you try all the harder. One makes up one's mind to succeed despite the odds, and one does.' From around 1934, and with financial assistance from the NSW Society for Crippled Children, Pecket studied full-time at East Sydney Technical College, undertaking courses in drawing, printmaking, painting and modelling. Her solo exhibition at the college in 1937 featured more than 60 works and included etchings, drawings, watercolours and mural designs along with oil paintings. Having completed her diploma, Pecket established a studio in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, where she initially painted and taught art. Subsequently, during the 1940s and early 1950s, she produced and sold a range of decorative ceramics under her own label, Christine Ware. In 1955, she bought a house in Cammeray, where she established a home studio and returned to painting and teaching. She published an autobiography, Some facets of my life, in 1976.
