Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay

Friends, gather round at my sensibly clad feet, for I have a story to tell. It is about shading, which I learned at school. Sadly I am not good at geography. But I am very good at shading.

This is because I moved to Queensland in the seventies. Queensland was a very hot and bright place at the time, but it was also known for being shady. So shady it was that the Federal Government of the time was unable to penetrate the glare and give us what many people in this fair Oz of ours experienced as a “modern” education.

We learned to shade by using pencils and small pieces of paper, no doubt supplied by our homes, to render maps of Australia and not a few of it’s States on browning mimeographed copies of the Commonwealth Bank stencil. Personally I loved it, as did many of my peers, for it gave me the time and patience to grow up and experience the shade for myself.

Friends, I present for you my design for the Kevin Rudd Tshirt Competition, 2012.