Brief Profile

After having a successful career in the fashion industry, spanning 30 years, Prue Acton is now concentrating on her first love, painting, at her studio at Wallagoot Lake in New South Wales. Acton studied life drawing classes at Swinburne College, Victoria, in the 1980s. She has also studied and painted with Clifton Pugh and Merv Moriarity. Acton's first solo art exhibition, 'Metamorphosis' was in Sydney in 1998. In 2004 she held a solo exhibition in Melbourne, ‘Light Colours Day’, at Lynne Wilton Gallery, Armadale.

Prue’s aim is to create the sensations of her visual experience through the resonance of colour: its hues, its purity, its tones. The form of these images play a secondary role to colour; a simple horizon line of low sand dunes separates Lake Wallagoot from the ocean; sometimes clouds catch the last light and the sky is reflected in her calm Autumn and Winter waters; the surface is broken by the ruffle of a light breeze or the wake of a boat.

Paul Klee, “a conjuror in colour”, called a 1931 work, “The Light and So Much else”. Acton uses the beauty of the Australian landscape to explore light and so much else, with the advantages of modern paints, the great colourists of the past and particularly, the teachings of her partner Merv Moriarty.

“Wallagoot Lake is constantly under threat of development of its catchment area and its wild life corridors between the surrounding Bournda National Park. Landscape values are also critical in our fight. That’s my task.”

Prue Acton