INSPIRE: Wheatbelt South artist Kerry Scally drawn to depict Dumbleyung Lake and the moments that surround it

In a converted shed “stolen” from her husband about five years ago, Dumbleyung creative Kerry Scally is kept busy putting moments to paint. The works on Scally’s studio walls capture memories of family and community — a common theme is the artist’s childhood home near Lake Dumbleyung. “I think it’s just because I was born and bred up on the lake hills you know,” she said. “The lake mainly probably draws me.” Scally’s family were among the first to settle in Dumbleyung and the lake she grew up near attracts people from afar. In 1964, Sir Donald Campbell set a water-speed-record on the lake in his hydrofoil and Scally was there to see it happen. “My mother used to sit up the top of the hill and watch up to New Year’s Eve when he was going to do the run and she’d say ‘he’s making his run’; think I was 14, my sister would have been four,” she said. “We’d go tearing up the hill, so we saw it but from our side, we could only see a little bit of spray, we weren’t around the other side where all the action was but at least I can say I saw it.” It was many years later on an adventure of her own to Caloundra in Queensland that Scally got serious about art after learning Chinese brush painting. “I always loved the Chinese style,” she said. “I haven’t been doing a lot of it — it’s done on rice paper, it’s very absorbent — if you leave your brush on too long it spreads out.” Her work now spans a broad range of mediums including oils, acrylic, gel-prints, watercolours and ceramics, and sales keep pace with production. “The artists that get famous of course are the ones that do a similar theme all the way through and frame them the same and all that,” she said. “I just swap from one thing to the other . . . you’ve got to challenge yourself.” Preparing for a move to Albany and recovering from a recent eye operation has slowed the artist’s creative output down a little and an unfinished painting of the lake beckons her from the easel. “I’ve been deliberately not painting things because once you start you want to finish,” Scally laughed. “You never get any of your bloody cleaning up done.”