Dee Smart’s ‘horrendous’ journey from Home and Away to the Archibald

The Glass House on Darling Street will be filled with native flowering plants as part of the festival, and Smart will also be interviewed by media personality Yumi Stynes on opening night as part of a program of talks organised by Lisa Tatman, founder of the My Kind Co creative collective, following a $10,000 grant from the Inner West Council.

Tatman said the exhibition of women artists was designed to transform the town hall’s meeting room “from traditional and patriarchal to matriarchal and of the moment”.

The Balmain festival is one of five smaller events that will be held across Sydney’s inner west this year after the council decided to redirect $400,000 of event funding from large-scale street festivals.

Despite an easing of COVID-19 restrictions, a council spokeswoman said it was not possible to predict future public health orders or whether another outbreak and lockdown might occur.

“Also, it is assumed that many people would be uncomfortable going out and mixing in large, close crowds,” she said.

Seven of Smart’s paintings will feature in the exhibition, including portraits of Ella Havelka, the Australian Ballet’s first indigenous dancer, and dancer and choreographer Meryl Tankard.

Smart said she relished the intimacy she developed with her subjects during their sittings.

“I love people,” she said. “I just want to dive in to every person I paint and really find some sort of spiritual – I don’t want to sound wanky – aura about that person that I want to try and capture.”

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Smart’s self-portrait, her third work to hang in the Archibald Prize, was painted last year after she had finished cancer treatment, her body so weakened it was a struggle to lift a paint brush.

She described sitting in front of a mirror “painting what I see”.

“I honestly thought it would get looked over,” she said of the small painting, which measures 59 by 49 centimetres. “I took a chance it could get overlooked.”

Smart said the cancer treatment left her feeling wretched for months, but she never felt scared.

“I knew I would get well,” she said. “It wasn’t easy. When I started painting, I didn’t want it to be a sob story.

“I wanted to show strength. We can survive and still be beautiful, kind, caring people. And all that because of the people around me, who were in my life.”