This confident and unflinching self portrait confirms accounts of Christine Audrey Pecket’s strong will and her dedication in the face of considerable obstacles. Aged five when she contracted poliomyelitis, Pecket relied on braces and crutches, enduring years of painful orthopaedic treatments. Despite these challenges, Pecket was determined to become an artist. She completed a diploma at East Sydney Technical College, and her solo exhibition in 1937 included over 60 works. In a review of the exhibition in the Sydney Morning Herald, she said: ‘Disabilities are supposed to take everything from life, to leave it hollow and empty. 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.’ After graduation Pecket established a studio in Castlereagh Street, Sydney, where she painted and offered tuition. Later she focused on pottery, producing a range of slip-cast decorative objects under the ‘Christine Ware’ label. In 1955 Pecket moved to Cammeray, where she built a studio and returned to painting, sculpting and teaching.
Purchased 2020
Christine A. Pecket (age 28 in 1936)
On one level The Companion talks about the most famous and frontline Australians, but on another it tells us about ourselves.
Well behaved women seldom make history, as the saying goes, and the National Portrait Gallery, consequently, is full of awesome Australian women who refused to conform to narrow ideas about their place and their worth.
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