ANNEMARIE LOPEZ takes a metaphorical journey with painter Yvonne Boag to arrive at a place of distinctive colour and robust form.

As a girl, Yvonne Boag and her family took a boat to Australia from Scotland. Her parents had made their minds up. They were never going back. Perhaps it was at that moment Yvonne became an artist — or at the very least, her nascent visual skills found a reason to evolve.“I could always draw,” says Yvonne. “Even at school. I thought everyone could.”

Yvonne’s family arrived in South Australia and moved to the remote smelting town of Port Pirie, a world that was foreign and unsettling to the young Scottish girl. “My father was a crane driver, my mother was a cleaner. So I knew nothing about art. But a teacher came to see my parents and said I should go to art school.”

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Image: Yvonne Boag, Living Together no 3, 2008, 152 x 122cm.