Visions of an artist DAME ROBIN'S NOMADIC LIFE

The artist's colourful past has caught up with her and being celebrated on film

- Elisabeth Easther

I'm the youngest of seven, but I was like an only child. Dad was in his mid-fifties when they had me and Mum was in her forties.

My brothers and sisters had mostly left home by the time I came along, so they were more like aunties and uncles. I'm 79 nowthe last one standing.

We moved around a lot when I was little, from Kerikeri to Whangārei and Mount Maunganui, probably because Dad was a builder. He was a very skilled carpenter and cabinetmaker, who could build an entire house. He was also a fantastic gardener and we'd purchase properties that needed fixing up. He'd get them looking wonderful, then we'd move on.

When I was four, we moved from Birkenhead to Epsom because Dad wanted me to go to a really good girls' school, which is how I went to Epsom Girls' Grammar for form three. That was a really important year because I found my feet in the art room, where I had an excellent art teacher. I knew her as Mrs Hardcastle but she was a well-known artist who went by the name May Smith.

My father's itchy feet got the better of him and we moved to Raglan. We bought a section with a single garage that we lived in while Dad built our house. It was right on the edge of the estuary that runs alongside the airstrip and I pretty much lived outside. I'd be at the beach, rowing around in the dinghy, going fishing or hanging out down at Te Kōpua. My teacher at Raglan District High School, Fergus McGrath, wasn't trained as an art teacher but he was kind, thoughtful and encouraging. He did paintings on black velvet and he let me explore whatever I wanted to, and somehow I got School Certificate art.