After years of drifting, pastel artist Louise Derry finds her creative flow.

Travelling the globe, sack on her back like a true vagabond, was a way of life for free-spirited Louise Derry before one phone call changed her direction forever.

The pastel artist, who was born in East Africa but raised in Staffordshire, England, says she was travelling around Australia with her now husband John Lang when a call from her parents stopped her in her tracks.

“My parents said they were coming to Australia to visit,” Louise says.

With no permanent home and still thousands of kilometres from her destination of Perth, Louise quickly changed plans, deciding instead to set up temporarily in the Far North. “To kill time we said let’s go to Cooktown and wait for them,” she says.

Louise and John liked the area so much they decided to stay. Seven years on the couple is still there, enjoying life near the tip, where Louise works at a local gallery and paints at every given opportunity.

It’s a far cry from the days she spent exploring the world alone, hopping from town to town, taking whatever work she could get.

“I was in the habit of working in the UK for a year or two and saving, then travelling for a while then coming back again when funds ran out,” she says. “I did work in various countries to extend my trips abroad. Over the years this included bar work, fruit picking, waitressing and domestic cleaning.”

Louise also taught English while living in Bangkok and worked for a seismic crew in Australia, travelling to remote pockets of the country a tourist rarely sees.

While on a brief stopover in Fremantle, Western Australia she even tried her hand at market life, selling silver jewellery and clothing imported on her many trips to Asia.

“This was done outside of the Freo markets. I was trying to avoid the rangers as I didn’t have a permit,” she laughs.

A true creator, Louise admits to having a hunger for knowledge and experience, which she satisfies through travelling, a passion second only to her love of painting.

“Throughout my travelling years I would sell my paintings whenever I stopped anywhere long enough to create them and find outlets to sell them,” she says. “I would also take on commissions for paintings when they came my way. All this time I was living on a budget, on a shoe string, as cheaply as possible to make the journey last as long
as possible.”

The self-confessed drifter, who easily grows restless, says she knows life on the road, though a great source of inspiration, is hardly the life of a painter.

“I have travelled with my pastels and had trouble every time I went through an airport. The colours in the box when they went through an X-ray must have looked like a bomb or sticks of dynamite. I was always pulled over and searched,” she laughs.

However, she realised it was necessary to “settle down” and stay put before she could ever really pursue her art full time.

For the past seven years Louise has done exactly that, realising a lifelong dream to spend her days putting on canvas the beautiful scenes that have captured her imagination since childhood.

“I’ve always painted, since I was a kid,” she says of her days growing up in the English countryside and her infatuation with its varying landscapes.

“That’s where it all started. I painted fields and sunsets and skies. I never used to paint animals and people, I always loved open countryside. As far as I can remember that’s what I’ve always loved to do and what’s inspired me.”

And Louise’s love for the land hasn’t waned. In fact, she doubts she’ll ever paint anything but the scenery that surrounds her.

“Ultimately you have to do what you’re passionate about. I could not paint a portrait of a dog, because as much as I like dogs, they don’t inspire me,” she laughs.

Of her penchant for pastels, which she discovered in her final year of art college in Yorkshire, England, Louise says it too is an infatuation that isn’t likely to fade.

“With pastels there’s nothing between you and the canvas. It’s a very direct medium to use, which I really like,” she says.

“It’s very immediate, very hands on, very tactile. There’s no brush between you. My hands are my tools and that’s it.”

Louise’s latest exhibition Where There’s Water is a collection of paintings taken from scenes throughout the Far North that attempt to capture the eternal inspiration and aesthetic appeal of water in all its moods.

She says her decision to focus solely on water and its place in the myriad landscapes of the region was based on its appeal as a fundamental key to life. “Water is our most vital resource and precious element,” Louise explains. “Seventy per cent of the earth’s surface is covered by it, the human body consists of 60-70 per cent of it and all known forms of life depend on it. We ponder and reflect upon it, letting our thoughts wander.

“Just as the meandering river returns to the ocean, finally returning to its very source, we too are inexplicably drawn.”

Where There’s Water is on at Gallery 53, 53 Spence St, Cairns from July 11 to August 2.

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