Sketches of a colourful life

"If you didn't tangle yourself with so many men," she told her, "you'd become a good painter."

The 84-year-old Gadsby, who married four times, admitted she was guilty as charged.

"I felt sorry for people," she said. "It was just unfortunate that

I nursed two husbands. I loved them all and when you look back at the life I've had, it's been very exciting."

Although Gadsby said she felt lazy compared with her fourth husband, abstract artist John Coburn, who worked frenetically before he died in November 2006, she can hardly be accused of letting life pass her by.

Her impressionist painting career has been sporadic, interrupted by four children, four husbands, whom she wrote about in her autobiography, Ted, Tom, Jim and John, and long periods spent overseas.

But Gadsby, who lives in Cremorne, said she had always found time for her art: "Painting to me is like breathing. It's something

I can't do without."

Her latest show, Impressions of Travel, opens at Eva Breuer Art Dealer in Woollahra on January 29 and includes landscapes drawn from sketchbooks she took to Tasmania, Italy and Canada.

"I get an impression of a place but I might not paint it for perhaps three months. Then I look in my sketchbook and the memory comes back."

Other works, such as the reflection of early morning light on snow in Gatineau sunlight, spring entirely from memory.

Born in Lismore, Gadsby studied at East Sydney Technical College during World War II before meeting Ted Gadsby, her first husband and father of her four children.

Gadsby is adamant she has had a charmed life but it has not always been easy. At one stage, she was alone raising four children in a rented house in North Sydney.

When her mother offered to pay the rent, Gadsby turned her down. "I've never been worried about money. Somehow someone has always rung up and wanted a painting."

Nudes exposed

IT'S called the Classical Alibi, and was used to excuse behaviour in the Victorian era. The idea that the ancient Greeks wandered around naked and accepted homosexuality and pederasty was used by those seeking to justify such behaviours in the 19th century, said Michael Turner, the curator of Exposed: Photography and the Classical Nude.

"In the 1890s, [Wilhelm] von Gloeden was exploiting local Sicilian boys as naked models in fulfilment of his own and others' fantasies." It's one example of what Turner said was the abuse of nude in photography. "There are perhaps half a dozen photos in the exhibition that people could take exception to."

The 100 images in the exhibition, which opens on Tuesday at Sydney University's Nicholson Museum as part of the Sydney Festival, explores the role of the classical nude in photography, beginning in the 1840s when photographers snapped statues because they stood still.

It also includes photographs of children taken by renowned American artists Fred Holland Day and Clarence White.

Turner said both artists' images were beautiful but "this is a very difficult area. We've had to be careful. But we're not shying away from their use. It will be interesting to see the reaction to them."

Drawn mainly from the collection of Florida lawyer William K. Zewadski, Exposed also features work by Joel-Peter Witkin - who is notorious for his photos of amputees, corpses, dwarfs, transsexuals and the deformed - as well as nude statues that were displayed in the Royal Botanic Gardens in the early 190os.

They were removed after a campaign by Archbishop Michael Kelly in 1911, who was upset by the sight of naked heathen bodies. Surprisingly, Turner said, a statue of a naked boy did not offend the bishop and remains in the gardens to this day.

Shire's sweethearts

EMMA THOMSON'S advertisements in the St George & Sutherland Shire Leader make it clear she is only after couples. It also states her interest in photographing them is artistic in nature.

Yet that hasn't stopped the single men of the Sutherland shire answering her "Models Wanted" classified.

Ian, for example, told the artist:

"I want to do a woman in bush shot" to which Thomson had to point out: "No, I'm taking shots of you."

"We're going to try and hook up," she said. "That will be interesting."

Thomson's search for couples is part of her Made in the Shire project, commissioned by Hazelhurst Regional Gallery & Arts Centre in Gymea, to document the area's sweethearts.

The exhibition opens in March and so far 50 couples have responded to Thomson's advertisements, including the sun-kissed Victoria and Matthew.

Thomson said she meets with couples (and single men) who share their ideas of how they would like to be portrayed: "We only meet once or twice, then I shoot and we don't see each other again."

No idea is too far-fetched for the the photographer although it's doubtful whether the man who suggested Thomson photograph him nude in a cemetery will see himself mounted on the wall of the Hazelhurst gallery.

It's not the first time Thomson has used a newspaper to find subjects. After exhausting her family and friends for The Homemakers - a series that included Thomson's boyfriend snoozing on a couch while she worked out on an exercise bike - Thomson photographed strangers for My World Is Now Yours, which included Nina and Paul, a finalist in the 2009 National Photographic Portrait Prize.

She said the respondents ranged from the curious to couples seeking a commercial opportunity and,

of course, exhibitionists such as the couple who asked to be shot naked at a motel. Thomson obliged.

"Some people wanted a really nice portrait of themselves as a couple," she said. "Then there were the strange ones - single men wondering what the ad was all about - and then couples who wanted to see what I had to offer and what I could offer them."

Thomson said she is still looking for couples to photograph.

As the ad suggests, single men need not apply. "Yeah, but that doesn't deter them."