At school, my art teacher Mr Colter sat down beside my easel. 'It's always interesting meeting parents of my students. They're not always how I imagined,' he said.
I put my paintbrush down and smiled.
'Do you go to galleries much?' he asked.
'Not a lot. I mean, I've been to the National Gallery of Victoria a couple of times. Once with school, a year or two back, and I've been a couple of times on my own.'
'My parents never took me to galleries either,' Mr Colter said. 'The first gallery I ever went to was when I was an exchange student in France and I went to the Louvre. I was seventeen and a bunch of my friends took me there. It's different in Europe, it's part of their culture.' He put his hands on his knees and thinks for a moment. 'See as many exhibitions as you can. We're lucky here in Melbourne, we have world-class exhibitions. There's always something new to learn.'
'Thanks for talking to my parents,' I said. 'They don't really get the whole art thing.'
'That's a pleasure. I'm impressed by your initiative. Artists who are self-driven will be more successful anyway. I've always believed that.'
He made a comment about using less water on my painting and then walked away. Courtney looked at me with her eyebrows raised, as if she wanted to know why was he always talking to me. I stared back at her until she looked away. I picked up my paintbrush again and continued working on my black ink painting of a cherry blossom.