24. Little Audrey, The Skipping Girl. By Jim Thalassoudis, 2011. Victoria Street, Richmond.
Melbourne Art Fair.

Every Sunday, back in the late fifties and early sixties, it was expected that the family visited the grandparents out in the western suburbs. From Blackburn to West Footscray, crossing Melbourne before the South Eastern Freeway was built.

Roast chicken dinners, when roast chicken was an expensive treat, and after reading a chapter of Tom Sawyer that I remember as the only novel on my grandparent's shelves, and browsing the week's collection of The Herald that my grandfather stored in the shed near the back fence, and after climbing the apricot tree out the back, because I could and, in season, the apricots were legendary, and after watching Disneyland which, if my luck was running, was from Adventure Land that week, or Fantasy Land, second best, and then being driven home usually with a two shilling coin in my pocket that was always my grandmother's parting gift, and wondering what I might be spending it on, and trying to stay awake until we'd driven under the skipping girl sign in Victoria Street, Richmond, on the way home. How those three alternately flashing parallel green neon lights below her feet so masterfully created the illusion of her skipping was both miraculous and wondrous.

It was a different Audrey then, and this is a painting of the restored version, after decades of inexplicable and despicable neglect. I have found photographs of the old Audrey, but the old Audrey of my memory was not in black and white.