ART UNITES DAD AND DAUGHTER

MANDY Dollery’s modern, fresh artwork painted on pine hangs on the left side of the The Gordon gallery.

Her work directly contrasts with her father’s grand, heavy oil paintings adorning the gallery’s right wall.

The unusual fatherdaughter exhibition — Now and Then, Father and Daughter — symbolises a relationship cultivated, later in life, by a mutual love of art.

Ms Dollery, pictured, who gave up her office job to study her passion, decided to curate the exhibition three years after her father’s death.

“It is something Dad would have wanted, but I never had the confidence to do it while he was alive,” Ms Dollery said.

“Now, it means a lot to me. His last exhibition was in Bundaberg, and there weren’t many people there — to see his work live on is great.”

John Dollery was a wellknown oil painter who painted large, often historical scenes. Ms Dollery’s favourite painting is her father’s dark oil painting of a moonlit Customs House in Brisbane.

“We were only close when it came to talk about art. My parents divorced when I was young and Dad moved away,’ Ms Dollery said.

Ms Dollery opened the exhibition on Monday and was asked by many patrons why she doesn’t paint with oils.

“I don’t think I could paint like him — so I wanted to do something different, my own,” Ms Dollery, who is completing her final year of graphic design at the Gordon, said. “I would never have had enough work to fill up a gallery on my own, this way Dad and I are doing it together.”

Now and Then, Father and Daughter shows at The Gordon Gallery 10am-5pm until October 13.