Maureen Watts

by madeleine Griffith

Maureen was a true Renaissance woman. She collected ideas, stories, and information from all sources and directions. She filtered them through her complex sieve of intellect, creativity, curiosity and imagination before they emerged as shimmering art objects in clay, paint, thread, cloth, or unfurled across the pages of a letter.

She was a weaver of stories and saw no boundaries between fields of interest: History, mythology, mathematics, art, science and language all ebbed and swirled together, creating a rich pool of inspiration layered into her work and life in concrete or abstract ways. These layers of thought and complexity are there in her art, singing on each thread or wrapped around the form of a ceramic work, where painted layers of underglaze join sculpted shapes, each idea formed at a different stage of the process yet joining in one complex outcome. There were no limits to her approach or abilities to explore materiality. She turned the threads into sculptures and myths into illustrations.

Maureen came into my life most unexpectedly in 2020. A dinner conversation with my dear friend Isobel, her daughter, resulted in Maureen teaching my son Latin online during the pandemic.

Over the next two years, Maureen met my son online twice a week. She brought this dead language to life for him. She invented games, puzzles, and used new technologies to engage and delight him. Her dedication and effort were astounding. She sent templates for masks and a script for a play in Latin where they each performed as several characters, all recorded over Zoom for us to watch afterwards.

She also invented lessons for my other children. Based on the journey of Lennie Gwyther, who, at the age of 9, rode his horse solo from Gippsland to Sydney to attend the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Maureen decided that they could recreate the adventure with Google Maps. They used street view to walk from our front door, out the gate and all the way to Sydney one digital step at a time. They would choose which town to stop in, see what interesting facts they could find, which cafe menu looked the best, how to budget their money, . Maureen seamlessly wove history, geography, science, maths and humour into their conversations, accompanying him on an intellectual and virtual adventure for one hour a week. Her talent as a teacher was extraordinary. She made learning a delight, an experience rather than a chore.

Each interaction with Maureen left you with a thousand ideas to ponder. After my first visit with Maureen I returned home with a piece of pool noodle, a bundle of embroidery thread, and instructions on how to do the intricate freeform threadwork she had invented, which combines elements of lace making and crochet inter woven with narratives of explosive colour and form.

After a visit in January this year we left with a gift of a “Loyal Leach,” a small embroidered creature that kisses the bad moods out of children, an embroidered “Parking Parrot” to keep in the car bringing good fortune to the driver, and a selection of her gorgeous ceramic beads that now hang off my key ring and bring me daily joy.

She was intensely creative, not just in her broad range of artistic pursuits but also in her way of life, thinking, and interaction. She beamed that back out at all who were lucky to be near her.

After her cancer diagnosis, we turned to letter writing and posted packages back and forth. Gorgeous handpainted cards would arrive from Portland filled with pages of hilarious stories and observations, always prompting discussions and making us all laugh.

We are deeply sad that Maureen has gone. She lit up our lives in the most delightful way. So few people live and experience life like she did, and we’re very fortunate to have her example. Not only has she has left behind this glorious and varied collection of artwork for us to enjoy, reflect on and remember her by but more than her art, she leaves us with a guide for how to truly live.