‘I’m a happy person, just terrible things happened in my life’: Albany artist shares story on how growing up during WWII shaped career

As a young girl growing up amid the terrible conflict of World War II, Maria Cool found refuge in art, escaping with creativity and selling crayon drawings to neighbours in the east of the Netherlands. Cool was nearly seven years old when the deadliest war in history began. “Being occupied by the nazis — that period was absolute hell,” she said. “I lost five of my family in a bombing, we were hungry, frightened all the time, bombs dropping everywhere and the persecution of the Jews ... they were terrible memories,” she said. In 1945, Cool’s mother and grandfather were killed on one tragic night. Her uncle, aunt and five-year-old cousin also lost their lives in the bombing. “The tragedy was that it was only a month-and-a-half before we were liberated,” she said. “The south of Holland had been liberated and the Allies came over our part trying to catch the nazis and sometimes by accident they would drop bombs around just to be sure, and they dropped a bomb on my grandparents’ house. Now aged 87, the seasoned Albany artist has been involved with art throughout her life. “I came from a very poor background. When I was a child I never had the opportunity to pursue art. But as far as I can remember I always had paper and a pencil, always drawing, some of which were bought by neighbours during the war,” she said. Cool’s school principal nicknamed her Little Rembrandt Helas after Dutch maestro Rembrandt, known for his portraits and biblical scenes. With a unique style and vibrant colour scheme, Cool creates Albany landscape paintings along with architectural, portraiture and fantasy work. “I don’t think I belong to any style in particular, I just do what comes into my head,” she said. “I always have ideas but never enough time.” Cool lived in her home town in the Netherlands for 21 years before migrating to WA on a six-week boat trip. “It was a wonderful trip, we arrived at Fremantle in February 1955 and since then have always lived in WA. I love it here,” she said. “After the war there was terrible tension and it looked as if there was going to be another war so we wanted to get as far away from Europe as possible.” Cool, who has lived in Albany with her husband John for 10 years, said she was never short of inspiration. “When I came to live here, I didn’t know Albany was so beautiful — the mountains and rocks, it’s fascinating,” she said. “I could imagine dinosaurs walking around here because it looks so ancient and some of the architecture is so beautiful, the old buildings I love.” Cool never had the opportunity to study art in the Netherlands so she studied part-time at Fremantle Technical School in the late 1970s. “When the youngest of my foster children went to school, it was the last chance to do what I always wanted to do, so for six years I took the bus from Safety Bay to Fremantle,” she said. Cool has three children of her own including daughter Rebecca Cool who is also an artist and children’s book illustrator based in Margaret River. Over many years, Cool has also fostered eight children. “People always ask me why? I always really felt for children because they are helpless,” she said. “Remembering what the nazis did to the little Jewish children during the war, tearing them away from their parents and sending them to the concentration camps, I took them in over pity and just wanted them to feel secure and loved.” Before Cool’s passion for painting started to blossom, she made enamel jewellery and ceramic sculptures. In 1969, she returned to the Netherlands for one year where she started her own jewellery line. “It was very fashionable back then. I was offered a travelling exhibition through Holland with my jewellery but I wanted to go to Paris, so I went to Paris with my children, took some of my jewellery and sold it all in a beautiful boutique,” she said. The painter said she also held exhibitions in San Francisco and London during the 1990s, which happened “completely unexpectedly”. Now focusing on her painting, she held her last exhibition in 2017 and is a member of the Make a Scene pop-up group, where she continues to sell her work. She is already working on her next painting of her beloved Albany. “I live in another world (when I paint), any worries, aches or pains I have all go away,” she said. “I’ve never painted anything sad or disturbing, I always do happy things because I’m a happy person — it’s just that terrible things happened in my life.”