Lesley Looney said she was a bit late to the painting game, but was inspired by her mother and sister’s art. 

“I have been painting for about 15 years, my mum and my three sisters were artists,” she said. 

“My inspiration came from watching them and I took it up when I retired and have been hooked on it ever since,” she said. 

Ms Looney will mainly acrylics in her contemporary and abstract art.

“Someone called me a colourist once and I decided I liked that title,” she said. 

“I am inspired by nature, I like to do rocks, hills and trees in my abstract form.

“You just lose yourself in painting, once you’re inspired to paint there is just no stopping you.”

The highlight of her painting career was the Fours Sisters exhibition, which was put on by Ms Looney and her three sisters.

“It culminated after a trip to Europe after our mum passed away,” she said. 

“She had always wanted to go, so we went and visited all the places she would have loved to go to and the exhibition was to commemorate her.

“It created public interest, because five members of the one family are artists.” 

The sisters hard worked together for two years to put the exhibit together and Ms Looney said it was the best way they could have honoured their mother’s memory. 

Ms Looney said the way she went about learning to paint was not quite conventional.

“A lot of people choose to do classes, but I didn’t want to be put in a box so I decided to do my own thing,” she said.

“The best thing is to go through magazines and books, use the internet and get some inspiration.”

The beauty of art, Ms Looney said is that it is so broad and speaks to so many people. 

“Art is so subjective, as an exercise we may paint the same scene and they’re all so totally different, in my art people see different things and not always what was intended,” she said. 

“The most common question I get is, what is it? My comeback is, what you want it to be.”

Ms Looney said the interest in art, both in buying and creating, is growing in Wagga. 

“There’s more and more people wanting to paint in Wagga, we get a lot of newcomers at the Wagga Art Society,” she said. 

“The best thing is when someone loves what you do and wants to hang it on their own wall in their own home, that’s the biggest thrill.”