Mum There’s No Soap

Mum There’s No Soap Original Oil on Board 25cm x 20cm

Kids all over Australia are much the same and enjoy the same things, and when you at home and need to wash up but there’s “No Soap” its bad news to be shared with Mum, because mum can fix it.  This cottage is in outback Australia or in Woop Woop which is Australian slang for the middle of nowhere. But plenty of school-aged children are living there, in the outback, whether on family cattle ranches or in remote indigenous communities. Many kids learn at School of the Air but even these kids have an opportunity every month or so to go to a school in town.  So, they’ve got kids their age they can play with, interact with, and learn things like how to share and a few rules, simple things.  “Things like sitting on the floor, for our little students, that’s a completely new experience to sit on the floor and listen to a book being read.”  There are no real challenges in teaching students who are usually so isolated.  “They’re all really nice kids and easy to get along with. You don’t have to reprimand them; they’re very grown up.  “A lot of them have a lot of responsibility at home, they’re quite grown up and you can have an intelligent conversation with them

Max is an Australian artist schooled out in the bush among the colourful characters he now paints. His vivid paintings are possible because he “knows” every character he paints he has worked, laughed, cried, and sweated with them all. This knowledge and love of his subjects produces pieces that are so “human” that each piece has its own personality.  Every painting has a story, but Max is a painter of “yarns”, Australian vernacular for a story with a moral and a laugh.  The experiences of those years Max spent in the outback; the memories of growing up in a small country town have provided Max with an endless flow of inspiration for his paintings. His works depict life in the outback as it was then, in a light-hearted vein keen insight and gentle humour that so keenly illustrates country Australians.

Original Oil on Board by Max Mannix