Merran Cork - Artist

The year 2000 saw a large change to my lifestyle. I moved to 'Halcyon Cottage', and I created extensive gardens around my 1920's home, forming a tranquil environment in which to live. It wasn't long before I had a group of a dozen people enquiring about art lessons. Not long after this, a friend Gary Boote, who'd begun sculpting, asked about venues to display his work. This was the beginning of a series of exhibitions in the garden I'd created. Scores of art lovers and creative souls made an annual pilgrimage to 'Halcyon Cottage'.

From 2003 I've travelled extensively throughout Europe, soaking up the atmosphere and studying art in galleries. In the surrounding countryside, I could see exactly what it was that the impressionists were painting. I was as intrigued as they were by the texture I observed. My stay on the outskirts of Trets, allowed me to walk into the medieval village to observe and to sketch. My home has been written up in Hunter Lifestyle Magazine and in the local papers. I've taught dozens, if not hundreds, of people how to paint in oils and how to play like children while creating a mosaic project. There are about 200 mosaic projects in my garden, creating interest and colour.

In 2008, my cousin, Debbie handed my her research into the heritage of a branch of my family, and over the past four years, another more demanding form of creativity has taken over my life. In 2007 I reclaimed my maiden name, which is Kilgour. From 2001 I've signed my paintings simply 'Merran'.
The name Kilgour has taken me on a diverse and fascinating journey. In 2009 I travelled to Scotland to attend the clan gathering in Edinburgh. Armed with Debbie's research, and information gathered from a very strange series of coincidences, I visited grave sites, archives and a farm in the village of Kinglassie, where my great-great grandparents toiled.

I wondered what life might have been like for the Kilgours of Kinglassie. I imagined the hardship in Scotland in the mid 1800's, and pondered what might have driven the five male members of the family to start-up new lives down under. Having never written anything other than two travel diaries and an instruction manual on how to paint in oils, the writing of my novel, which is called 'Fin', has been a huge learning curve, which has sapped all of my creative energy. I'd hardly lifted a paintbrush in seven years.

Now that the novel is finished, but not yet published, a strong urge to paint has returned. I seem to be painting more from the heart, from places visited and feelings remembered. Where all this is going to take me, I'm not sure, I'm just enjoying the journey.