I have been back in the Philippines exactly one week now and I simply could not have returned if it weren’t for my Uncle Richard A. Ward.
For many years uncle Richard existed only as a name at the bottom of letters and a faded little girl memory. It seemed very exciting to have an uncle who lived in England and had been to university, but the disdain of youth somehow turned to decades of silence and sadly it took the death of his brother for us to really start to know one another.
Uncle Richard is primarily a musician but he is also an accomplished painter, pipe organist, bell toller and published author. I had no idea of the range of his talents until one afternoon last year, alone in his eclectic house, I began to notice walls of beautiful water colours, crayon drawings and mosaics. Later he would show me through his art works including the materials he uses to teach water colour classes at a local gallery.
This blog has been sitting in draft for months, originally I just wanted to capture these wonderful paintings to share with you. It is more than that now. To read a description of each piece, hover over the image or click inside the gallery to open individual pictures. Also my apologies for somehow deleting my favourite piece: Roman Honeyeater.
For many years Richard Ward was the head teacher at the Inverell TAFE (check out this old clipping I found amongst mum’s stuff). I also found out from another clipping that he was the recipient of a commonwealth scholarship while in high school. I was a bit impressed actually.
Now retired, you can find Uncle Richard regularly at the local library (selling stamps to help me with my aid work), volunteering his time as an art teacher, choir keyboard master, church organist.
This post is only an introduction to an extremely talented individual and I don’t think in any way represents the full range of his achievements. Perhaps one day he’ll exhibit some of his art in a gallery and start that blog on all those historic characters he has been researching. And that truly is another story.