WHILE artist Georgie Roy may be better known in the Halstead area for her work, this month her latest exhibition is back where it all began - in Colchester.

Having lived in Gosfield for the past 40 or so years, Georgie was born and brought up in Glasgow before her family moved down to Essex.

From 1960, for about three years, her parents ran the Clarendon pub in Colchester and it was while she was based here in the town she began studying at the Colchester School of Art.

“I always wanted to go to art school,” she tells me, “but my parents didn’t have any money to send me so I got a job with the Midland Bank, in London and saved up to go.

“I was there for a couple of years, being taught by people such as John O’Connor, Max Brooker and Paul Nash, before my parents moved out to Beazley End and I just couldn’t get to the college every day.”

Eventually Georgie got a job teaching before leaving to concentrate on her paintings, while also running the very successful Gosfield Scarecrow Trail.

“We set up the first one in 2002,” George adds. “I had seen it somewhere else and thought it was a brilliant idea to promote public art.

“It was an immediate success with more than 190 the first year going up to 700 in later ones. In the end we were raising between £10,000 and £13,000 each year with various charities benefitting including Mencap and the local church.”

Her current passion is traction engines with Georgie travelling all over the country to display shows, but her latest exhibition is inspired by her trip to Australia where she studied Aboriginal painting.

“I spent eight and a half weeks out there,” she says, “and I went out and painted every single day. For the portraits many Aboriginal people believe photographs take away their soul but there were a few who agreed. I painted those when I got back home from the photographs and mounted them on corrugated iron to mirror the roofs of the houses the people lived in.”

Georgie Roy’s exhibition is at the Colchester Gallery on North Hill until July 29.