Beware of the Red Dress Woman > Judy Prosser

Judy's artistic career began at the very early age of 6, when she spent afternoons after school drawing pictures in chalk on the blackboard of the school where her father was a school teacher. Encouraged by him to draw, she filled sketchbooks throughout her childhood and teens, with drawings mostly of animals, and especially of horses, her passion. After studying art for three years and attaining a Diploma in Fine Art at the Claremont School of Art, in Perth, Western Australia in 1978, she headed north to the Kimberley , W.A., and on to Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory. In the north of Australia she discovered all the subjects of her dreams; wetlands, rivers and billabongs full of crocodiles, waterbirds and wildlife, and a vast and changing wild landscape. Her travels across this country have led to periods of painting in Broome and Kununurra (W.A.); Darwin and Kakadu (N.T.); Cairns and Cape York, Mission Beach and Maleny (Qld). She has produced paintings with subjects ranging from rainforest birds - riflebirds, cassowaries, catbirds - to wetlands and desert creatures - crocodiles, brolgas, magpie geese. Her great respect for the aboriginal people, and their spiritual connection to the land, has given Judy a direction which has evolved into a distinctive approach to painting them. Her watercolours often depict figures dancing freely in the Australian landscape, along with brolgas, dingos and other animals. With the spectacular colours of the Kimberley to inspire her, Judy loves to paint the mangroves and tidal creeks, the red dirt of the desert, and the turquoise seas which kiss the white sands of the Kimberley coastline. Judy spends several months of the year 'out bush' with her husband, Tom Beckers, trekking with him and his camel team along the Fitzroy River and into the Great Sandy Desert, and camels have become a new passion for her with many camel paintings resulting from their safaris. Judy has had many Exhibitio