Sophie Conlon
Mount Gambier/ Berrin artist Paul Sundstrom has recently had five of his works displayed in the Myriad show at the State Library of South Australia.
The Myriad show ran during the South Australian Living Arts Festival and was organised by Community Living Australia to showcase art by people living with disability across South Australia.
This was the second time Mr Sundstrom had entered the show and he travelled to the opening in Adelaide with his brother and sister.
“They enjoyed it, my brother has never seen my work at the show,” he said.
Mr Sundstrom said it was great to see all the artworks by other artists, but it was even better to be acknowledged individually.
“The big boss this year said ‘Paul, your work’s very good,’,” he said.
Though Mr Sundstrom did not win an award during the show, he said he was still a winner.
“To me, winning was having my work on display, my art is shared, and the opportunity to sell,” he said.
During the opening of the show, Mr Sundstrom said he wanted to do a nice thing from his heart and so he gave one of his paintings away to Uncle Mickey Kumatpi Marrutya O`Brien
“I showed kindness to the Elder, and then he gets up to open the show and he spoke about the two cockatoos, so it was interesting that I had given the painting to him,” he said.
“It was a spiritual painting for me, I went out into the bush and got bark from trees, it was a lot of work.
“The bark painting was the perfect gift and I felt passionate to give it to him.”
Mr Sundstrom said Uncle Mickey was a “real nice person” and in return gifted him a keyring.
“We were able to have a talk and I said all the materials came from Mount Gambier,” he said.
After gifting the artwork to Uncle Mickey, Mr Sundstrom said the painting was accidently sold, so he had to do it again.
During the show Mr Sundstrom was able to sell three of his artworks and donated two more.
“The Lighthouse and the Lion, I donated them to Community Living Australia and they will give them out to people,” he said.
Always working on the next big thing, Mr Sundstrom is already hard at work creating pieces for next years Community Living Australia’s SALA show.
