WILL & VALDA

VALDA, 89: Will was my second grandchild. He wasn’t terribly friendly to everybody as a baby, but he loved his mother. When he got a bit older, he became very independent. We always spent a lot of time together, though. We sailed around Australia in a boat in the ’80s, and Will and his sister Louise came more often than not. We used to go to an island where no one else had been, and we’d let the grandchildren swim and explore the beach. It was very meaningful. As far as I was concerned, I could have lived on the boat.

I was an artist, then a corporation wife for 30 years. My husband and I were always entertaining and having people around to stay. We lived in Paris and Geneva for eight years, so I spent a lot of time learning to take in art by osmosis, going to the Louvre and Pompidou Centre once a month. But I didn’t do much art when my children were young – it was too hard.

I think women had more trouble becoming famous back then, because it was always the man who took over. Women had to feed their partners. I was brought up with my mother-in-law telling me to make sure I was home when my husband came home, so I could have a drink with him. And to put the children to bed so they didn’t bother him. But luckily, things are changing.

I’m not surprised Will became a musician. Music was part of the family and so was art. My father was an artist before he went to the First World War, and my father’s father did art, too. Musicians and artists have a lot in common. We both work the same sort of way – Will does musical sketches, or songs, whereas I do an illustrative sketch every day. I often say this to the art class I teach: “You’ve got to do a drawing every day, because it keeps your hand, eye and brain working together. If you don’t continue doing it, you’ll lose everything.”

Art has been my focus my whole life. It’s a compulsion and I have great will to do what I do. If you’ve got the focus, which Will does, art and music is something you’ll have with you forever. Young people have a big future with all they can do. I think they’re a lot more clever than we were at our age.

WILL, 28: Grandma and Grandpa had a boat they built with my dad and his siblings, so we spent most of our family holidays together sailing around different parts of Australia. We’d do lots of art and drawing on the boat. We’d be out for weeks at a time, so we definitely got to know each other more than other families.

There are two main things I learned from Grandma. When I was really young, I started drawing, and after a few lines, scrunched it up and threw it in the bin. Grandma pulled it out and finished the drawing. It looked amazing. It was this lesson not to discard your work too early, because you don’t know what you’ve created. You need to be patient. If you throw everything out, you don’t end up making anything at all.

The other lesson was to make music every day. It helped me get better, writing daily. It’s the music equivalent of a sketchbook – you’re not going to publish your sketchbook, but your published works wouldn’t be very good if you didn’t have hundreds sitting behind it.

Grandma is great at teaching you how to interpret the world artistically. If you see a living room with brown chairs and red walls, she’ll find the oranges, the purples and the greens in the room and make it look great. She’s got great style. I’ll always remember her as this tiny 70-year-old woman on the deck of the boat, pulling down sails. We got her a chainsaw for her 80th birthday for her sculpture work. She already had an angle grinder and circular saw, so what do you get the grandma who has everything?

I got married not long ago in Grandma and Grandpa’s house. My connection to my grandparents is really strong. Some people never get to know their grandparents, but it’s hard for me to imagine what that experience would be like. We really connect over arts and I love Grandma’s perspective. She’s not naïve, but she just sees possibility. There’s something really refreshing about that. I love that she’s 89 and not afraid.

We watched anime the other week, and she was so inspired to make stuff. I 100 per cent want to be like that when I’m her age. She’s the queen of inspiring herself, and she knows she needs to keep exploring, otherwise she’ll only start going backwards.