RICHNESS OF SPIRIT
Artist Alice Bowman-Shaw found the perfect home in West Hobart when she returned to Tasmania with her husband and children after 13 years in the UK
I’ve always loved old things,” says artist and educator Alice Bowman-Shaw. Her fourbedroom Federation-era home isn’t the oldest one in her West Hobart street but for her, age is as much about connections as years.
This comes from childhood. “Mum would always point out beautiful sunsets and colours in the landscape. Dad was a cinematographer and encouraged me to crop and focus the way I looked at the world. I became really fascinated with detail. Give me something old and I want to know its history,” she says.
Alice worked as an art teacher even before she had a teaching qualification, plucked from her degree by a desperate Hutchins School, whose art teacher had resigned mid-year. “I really was thrown in at the deep end,” she says of teaching grades 4–10 while studying for her exams. “But it was worth it.”
After a breakup, she travelled to the UK, and ended up staying 13 years. A picture of Milton Abbey, which has a traceable history to the 900s, hangs above her dining table as a reminder of that time. “Early on I landed a job at Milton Abbey School, in Dorset. I had an apartment on the third floor of the tower of this 17th century mansion. When my alarm didn’t go off the church bells would wake me at 8am, just enough time to get to class!”
It’s where she met her husband, Justin. “He was teaching Spanish and French at Milton Abbey. We hooked up pretty quickly,” she
says. Later the couple moved to Berkshire, where they had their children, Sophia and Cecilia. “Kate Middleton lived up the road,” she recalls, “but there wasn’t much to do and the coffee was terrible. We were lucky to have a great dinner party circuit but, as I discovered, motherhood changed me in ways I had no idea it could.”
The pull to return to Tasmania was strong. “Throughout my whole time living in England I’d come back at Christmas every couple of years. I can still remember getting off the plane and smelling the eucalyptus. As time went on I was just longing to be back here. Then one day as I was getting off the plane at Heathrow on a miserable February day and I just started crying. I knew then that I had to come home.”
The pair now teach at separate schools — Alice at The Friends’ School , Justin at Hutchins — and make biennial visits to England. On their next trip, they’re excited to collect an oil painting that has been in Justin’s family for years. It’s a rare portrait of the Duke of Monmouth — Charles II’s eldest illegitimate child. “He was beheaded at the Tower of London,” Alice says. “He had a love affair with Lady Henrietta Wentworth, who had lived at Toddington Manor, near where Justin grew up.” As it turns out, his beheading was one of the most gruesome in history, following an attempt to overthrow the king, his father. “I feel sorry for him,” Alice says. “We’re going to give him a home here in West Hobart.”
The couple settled in West Hobart in 2015. While the house isn’t heritage-listed, it does sit on sandstone foundations and the interlinking stories of Hobart’s past.
“We repainted the whole interior before we moved in,” Alice says. An evenness in paint tone across light and dark rooms is the result of tints. “In the hall it’s only a quarter strength because it doesn’t get as much light,” she says. The ceiling and above the picture rail is brightened with vivid white.
The hub of the home is a 20th century extension out back. A galley kitchen with island bench overlooks an extensively glazed open-plan living and dining room with a cosy wood heater.
The large backyard recalls the days when everyone had an orchard, and maybe a cow too. A mature golden elm provides serene shade in summer and lets the sun shine in winter. Annuals blaze in colour during spring.
A magnolia down the side was planted by the previous owners, who Alice and Justin first met in England.
“They planted the tree when they were pregnant with their son. I’ve been his teacher here in Tasmania. He actually told me his parents were selling. I’m so glad they chose to sell to us instead of putting it on the market. We love it so much.”
Art education has been Alice’s passion for years, and finally she’s indulging her own practice. “I’ve always loved drawing; the spontaneity of the drawn line is really what my artwork is about.” Prints of her Brilliance Rose, above, are available through the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute.