By Callum Ludwig
Talented former Mooroolbark College student Shayla Kimpton will be celebrated in an exhibition being put on display this month, congratulating the achievements of herself and other students creating masterpieces in a challenging year of schooling.
Throughout 2021, Kimpton took inspiration from the challenges the year presented, highlighting the need for hope and optimism alongside the doom and gloom students often felt during an interrupted year.
“I tried to symbolize it in terms of the colors I use, long drips and darkness to sort of symbolize those hard times, I guess,” Ms Kimpton said.
“But then I tried to contrast with vibrant orange flowers, things to show you can get through it.”
Ms Kimpton is part of 31 VCE and VCAL students of 2021 from around the Yarra Ranges who have been given the opportunity to have their artwork displayed in 2022’s Creative Showcase at The Memo in Healesville.
She explored a variety of mixed media, watercolour and acryllic painting in her artwork last year, as well as experimenting with sequence strips and cut paper. Over the next few years, she hopes to dabble in oil painting, due to its usefulness for portraiture.
Ms Kimpton said getting to show her artwork off in the showcase makes the challenges of VCE and the events of the past two years feel like a significant achievement.
“It makes it feel like all the hard work and my perseverance and dedication throughout year 12 was all worth it. It feels good to show everyone and have people say you’ve done well, despite how hard it was at times,” she said.
Her advice to Year 12 students of 2022 and beyond was not to be too hard on yourself, give it a go and do your best.
Ms Kimpton’s piece Flourishing Fearlessly will feature as part of the exhibition, a piece which she said took a lot of time and hard work, but she is ultimately very happy with.
“It changed so much just in the progress of making it, how I envisioned it isn’t necessarily exactly how it turned out,” she said.
“But I like it even more just because I went with the flow, tried not to be too specific on how I wanted it to turn out because I wanted to embrace the imperfections and the splats and all the things that happened along the way.”
In the future, Ms Kimpton is planning to do a health science degree at university, continuing her artistic ventures as a hobby so she can separate her passions from her study.
“I’ll always be able to go to my creative side when I’m feeling down or when I just need to escape reality,” she said.
The exhibition is running from Friday 4 February through to Sunday 27 February, hosted by the Yarra Ranges council in collaboration with Burrinja Cultural Centre.
