A journey through life in art

The latest exhibition at the Red Tree Gallery in Jindivick invites visitors to walk through the life of Drouin-based artist Susan Cock.
Titled "My Life Through Art", the exhibition features a diverse collection of art across many mediums, all significant to Susan's life and her journey as an artist.
"It's an exhibition, but it's also a little bit of a talk (about my life)," Susan explained. "I've got little bits of paper that I've laminated explaining me and (telling) a story. I think it gives other people things to look at while they're also looking at the art."
From textile creations to journals, the exhibition showcases the diversity of Susan's artistic talents.
"The exhibition's not sort of your normal stuff," Susan said.
"I dabble in a heck of a lot of different genres (of art), textiles as well as paintings as well as drawings. I've done a bit of bookmaking, so there's journals and I love recycling, so there's a lot of stuff made out of recycled material."
One of Susan's hardanger pieces represents a significant moment in her artistic journey.
"I was involved with the Johnson Collection in Melbourne, they invited people from Gippsland about 10 years ago to decorate this building," Susan explained.
"I did a piece that I then framed later on. That forms part of my history and an explanation of my art."
Susan's watercolour painting of the Murray River is an example of the stories behind her work.
"We were down on the Murray and one of my girlfriends said to me, think of yourself as an inanimate object...so I thought, what would I say if I was a tree?" Susan said.
"So I wrote a piece that describes what I would think a tree would say and I put it underneath this painting!"
Describing her artistic style as "a bit wacky", Susan said her goal for the exhibition was to encourage others to embrace their creativity and shake off feelings of imposter syndrome.
"I just wanted to put different forms of art out there to let people realise that they can do it too," Susan said,
"I felt like an imposter saying that I was an artist because I'm not a Rembrandt or a Picasso or something like that - in my opinion, that's what an artist is."
"But I saw a definition that said an artist is someone who basically puts pen to paper or makes marks on something. I thought, well, in that definition, yeah, I am an artist!"
Susan encouraged visitors to ask questions about how she created certain pieces or about the techniques she used,
"I get pleasure out of showing other people how to do things too," she said. "If people ask me, I'll just say this is how I did it because to me, sharing it is equally as fun."
Susan's exhibition "My Life Through Art" will be on display at the Red Tree Gallery in Jindivick until the end of February.