I entered four artworks into the Royal Adelaide Show’s art exhibition this year. I’ve been very lucky with this show in the past. I entered it in 1995, 2007 and 2010 and I won a category each time. This year I entered two works in the ‘pastel’ category and two in the ‘drawing’ category. It would have been nice to keep up my record of 100% success. Last night was the opening with a few big wigs doing speeches. In the past I’ve been rung up and informed I’d won so I would be there at the presentation. This year, no such phone call. I never expect to win so it wasn’t a disappointment but I did consider it my best showing ever. Anyway, Gaynor and I arrived and of course the first thing is we looked for my work among the 350 pieces and to confirm that, while there were ribbons on others, there were none on mine. Then we looked at the rest of the work and saw that the standard was incredibly high, which it usually is but this year, really awesome.

The funny thing was they had already put second place ribbons up but were holding first place ones back since they had a celebrity there doing the presentations. Hence, not seeing anything on mine, I settled back to enjoy the show thinking I hadn’t won anything. Then they announced me as a winner of one category which was amazing, so off I go to shake hands and get my award and then they ushered me off to get photographed for their website, but before I had even got to the photographer, blow me down I hear my name again in the next category and have to go back to shake hands again. So not only did I win the drawing category, I also won “pastels” which is huge for me since there is a massive pastel society which I’m not even in.

Check out the grin!