In 1915 I enlisted and eventually I found myself in France, in action. In 1917 at Bullecourt, I was wounded and eventually had my right arm amputated. Just as soon as I was sufficiently strong, I felt the urge to continue drawing and tried to do something about the situation. So, I set about training my left hand to do what the right hand had been accustomed to do. When I returned to Australia, I continued my work with war sketches and memories of action in France in pictorial form.
From there my work diverted rather to imaginative work in mostly watercolour. Just a few years later I realised that I was working rather on too small a scale with the character of watercolour, and felt that I should be using a medium that allowed me to express my design and ideas on a larger scale. And so began the larger part of my life’s work in mural decoration and design.
