I hope you enjoy Lilia’s Story. This is the speech from my last formal function to officially open Operation Art at Maitland Regional Art Gallery:

Sometimes in life we just get lucky, well I really landed on my feet the day I started this job. I’ve received the utmost pleasure from being the Coordinator of Operation Art and managing this unique program. I feel very privileged to have been given the opportunity to meet and work with some amazing people.

Operation Art was initiated by the Children’s Hospital at Westmead and is run by the NSW Department of Education.
Every year we ask schools across NSW to submit up to four artworks each. These artworks are created by students for children in hospital and from all of those we select fifty to become part of the permanent collection at the Children’s Hospital at Westmead. Because they are so great they are shown firstly at the Art Gallery of NSW and then tour throughout the following year to several regional galleries before returning to hang on the walls at the hospital.
I could give you more facts like that about the program but I would rather tell you a story that shows you its heart.

Lilia’s Story:
I first met Lilia in 2006 when her artwork was hanging in the Operation Art main exhibition.

Lilia was 8 years old and her chalk pastel drawing of teddies ‘Ready for Bed’ artwork was hanging proudly alongside 601 others, it had been selected in the top fifty and had also been chosen as the junior winner for that year.
The next time I met Lilia, was the following year at the same annual exhibition opening. Once again her artwork had been selected to represent her school and once again it had been selected in the top fifty.

She bowled up to me excitedly and said “Mrs Steel, I have to tell you something. Last year when my art was hanging at the Art Gallery of NSW I met a lovely lady artist… her name was Margaret… and she invited me back to draw.” I looked for some kind of explanation from her Dad who was standing proudly next to his clever daughter. Yes, Lilia had indeed met Margaret Olley at the opening and subsequently, arrangements had been made for a short visit.

This little girl had been invited into Margaret’s wonderful world of art one afternoon and they’d spent time talking and drawing together. Lilia had been inspired and had gone on to create her artwork that was hanging in the 2007 exhibition. I looked at her latest entry and noticed that it was a very busy still life, a work full of flowers. The inspirational Margaret Olley was all over it!

“Wow Lilia! You must be so proud of what you have done,” I said. “Do you realise that you’ve had your artworks selected twice by your school now to be hung professionally here in this gallery with all these other ones? And by the time they get back to hang on the walls in the hospital, you will have exhibited twice at the Art Gallery of NSW (I haven’t); you have drawn with one of Australia’s most loved and well-known artists (I haven’t); your artworks will have toured to at least ten regional galleries across NSW over two years (mine haven’t) and they’ve probably been seen by about 100,000 people in that time… and you are only eight years old!”
“Yes,” she said quietly, “but the best thing Mrs Steel,” and her face lit up now, “is that now I’ll have two artworks hanging at the hospital.”
What I didn’t know about Lilia until then and her Mum had to explain to me was, that before Lilia went to school, she had spent quite some time in the Children’s Hospital at Westmead as one of their young patients. And as a family they had spent, what seemed at the time, like endless hours with Lilia in the hospital. She had spent nervous nights away from home and they had all waited together for tests to be done or results to come back, hours that turned into days of anxiously waiting, waiting and more waiting.

The only sanctuary they found during that difficult time was in walking the halls. This hospital is a registered art gallery and Lilia loved looking at the artworks hanging on the walls. They invited her into their world of colour and imagination and transported her away to a calmer place without cares. Her Mum and Dad and brother would take turns to walk mile upon mile around the halls with Lilia and they’d all be whisked away into her other world. Lilia had found the value of visual arts at the age of only four years old. She understood the real and very practical value that an artwork can have on its viewer.

So when you look at these artworks exhibited here today at Maitland Regional Art Gallery, enjoy your sneak peek before they return and are hung forever in the hospital. Remember why they were done and who they have been created for, think about who will look into them in the future.
Think of Lilia… and let yourself be drawn into the world she found when she was only four years old!