Samantha Wortelhock is used to getting a good response to her murals but nothing like the reception in Narooma.
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As she painted people veered off the highway to admire the mural and thank her, one woman bought her a hot chocolate and another shouted her dinner.
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Community's gift to Narooma
It was a Legacy Narooma project to mark Legacy's centenary and was led by chairman Ross Arnold who approached the community for funds to pay the artist.
Erin and Mal Barry, Michael Gardner, Lyn and Bruce Williamson, Mick Clothier, Quota, John Murray, Ben Bate and Woodys Building Supplies were among the many who readily supported.
Through word of mouth Mr Arnold came across Ms Wortelhock and explained the project.
"I said you can say a lot by being very simple," Ms Wortelhock said.
Given everyone knows what a poppy stands for she suggested painting a field of poppies and a single soldier.
She believes the strong response to the mural relates to the sentiment surrounding what poppies represent.
Untutored, instinctive, storyteller
Ms Wortelhock moved from England to Australia in 1988 after watching a David Attenborough film.
"It inspired me to connect with First Nations people and I thought art would be the best bridge."
The untrained artist lived in the Mullumbimby region for 35 years, on a mission to restore dignity to the land.
Her paintings and murals have resonated, taking her to Cape York for the Royal Flying Doctors' Service and remote Aboriginal communities there for Queensland Health.
Only art and music and storytelling deliver that healing because they have the power to bypass the mind and go directly to the heart.
- Samantha Wortelhock
Murals changed children's behaviour
Her art came to the attention of the Department of Education and she volunteered to take her art into schools.
"They tell big stories and children, especially children on the spectrum, connect with them in such a deep way," she said.
Ms Wortelhock's "hundreds and hundreds" of murals have transformed schools around Byron, Tweed and Tenterfield from "really cheerless spaces" into a "panorama of stories and put nature back in there".
"When children feel worthy of the enhancement of their learning environment they feel valued and it changed their behaviour."
The woman who shouted her dinner in Narooma was from the University of NSW and knew of the impact of her work in schools.
Boy soldier
The lone solider in the mural is Bernard Haines.
He enlisted aged 14 and was gravely wounded when he was 16.
After 41 operations, he died of his war injuries in 1926, eight years after WWI had ended.
"In the mural he is an apparition, you can see the poppies through him.
"He came home but with the pain of those who didn't come home," Ms Wortelhock said.
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