“It’s finally my turn to shine,” laughs Foxground artist Robyn Sharp. “I’ve always been the director's wife, now I’m the star.”

The director Robyn refers to is her husband Lindsay, the former head of Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum and world-renowned museologist. While her comments are tongue-in-cheek, the curation of this show, held in the Gerringong Art Gallery adjacent to the Gerringong Library and Museum (GlaM), is all Robyn’s with her husband happily following directions on where to hang her stunning artworks. Paintings and drawings which use a range of mediums, including pencil, acrylic and charcoal and capture the beauty of the Australian bush in all its variations; fire, flood and in full bloom.

It is the elements that have inspired Robyn’s third show Dreaming of Dharawal Days. Much of her recent work focuses on the local landscape, at Bundanon, Jervis Bay, Moreton National Park, and of course her beloved Foxground - home to the hidden gem that is her Cedar Ridge Art Studio.

It is where Robyn and Lindsay watched in terror as ash from the 2019 bushfires rained down on them, and a raging inferno edged ever-closer to their property. Thankfully their home and Robyn’s studio was spared.

“But after the fires I had to create a lot of artwork to get it out of my system, I dealt with the trauma through art,” she explains, pointing to a detailed depiction of a grass tree.

“This is one of my favourites. I painted it shortly after the fires when Lindsay and I went for a walk in the Moreton National Park. The bush was deathly silent, there were no birds, no animals but the grass trees were in full flower. It was so heartening to see such beautiful regeneration after the fires. It gave me hope.”

Hope is something we could all use more of, given the extreme weather events that have lashed the coast in recent years.

“With climate change comes more intensive weather systems and we get flooded in on our property at least once or twice a year now,” says Robyn. “When you live in a beautiful place you are often at the mercy of the elements.”

But she wouldn’t trade her picturesque studio for any other in the world, and she has had a few; in the United States, Canada, England and a “little flat in Paris”.

“One of the benefits of being the director’s wife is that I could go to art school in Chelsea (during Lindsay’s stint as the director of London’s National Science Museum in the early 2000s). I had some incredible teachers and mentors who shared their knowledge of figurative drawing and sculpture during that time,”

But Robyn credits the free university scheme under Gough Whitlam’s government for kickstarting a long and illustrious career as an artist.

“I won a scholarship to the National Art School in Sydney, under the then Whitlam Government’s free university education scheme. I had a living allowance of $10 a week for food and board, can you believe it,” she asks incredulously. 

It is this sense of wonder, of how far she has come as an artist, that endears the artist to members of the community who poke their head into the gallery as she sets up her Dreaming of Dharawal Days exhibition, the first show to be held in the Gerringong gallery space. A husband and wife offer to help Robyn hang one of her works and walk away with a breathtaking landscape before her show has officially opened. 

Dreaming of Dharawal Days will be on display at GLaM to April 24, before moving to Cin Cin’s Wine Bar May 7.