Rodney Stevens

Visitors to Bourke in western NSW will soon be able to enjoy the magnificent work of Clarence Valley artist Vicki Gooch who was commissioned to paint both sides of 10 doors that will adorn cabins in a caravan park and delight travellers from around the world.

The Eatonsville based artist who has been painting for more than 40 years said when her son Daniel and his wife Steph, who hold the lease for the Mitchell Caravan Park at Bourke, saw her paint pouring designs they thought they would be ideal artworks to bring inspiration, colour, and joy to travellers.

“My son Daniel and his wife Stephanie have been running Mitchell Caravan Park at Bourke for the past five years and he has all these cabins that he hires out and the doors on them had all had it and needed replacing,” she said.

“Because I had started a paint pouring class for the public and he liked some of the designs, he asked if I could do some designs for his doors.

“I ended up doing 10 doors, with paintings on each side, so 20 paintings all up and I had some help from my friend who did two of the paintings of my designs and my husband Ray who did one painting.”

Over the past two years Bourke has worn the wrath of mother nature, so the doors will be an appealing aesthetic addition to help ‘uplift’ the spirits of both travellers and locals.

“They’ve had a bad trot out west, the roads are really bad, and they’ve had major flooding where all the roads were cut, and then they ended up with fires and having no power,” Mrs Gooch said.

“They’ve done really well in doing the park up and being pet friendly for all the grey nomads, they’ve come a long way, and after the recent bad run we really thought it would give them an uplift.”

The finishing touches have just been applied to the standard size doors that have taken Mrs Gooch 18 months to paint, as wet weather saw periods where she couldn’t paint.

The doors, which will be installed in the coming months feature native flora and fauna, colourful abstract designs and paint pouring techniques that produce eye catching designs and colours. 

“I can use anything from water colours to acrylics and mixed media in all the different types of art that I do, that range from abstract, to realism, paint pouring, and I use sculpture in my artworks to make them three dimensional,” Mrs Gooch said.

“The doors are all very different, they involve a few animals on the backs of the doors for the people in the cabins to let them know there are animals in the area.

“All of the art on the outside of the doors is colourful, happy, and inspirational, and everyone has their favourite colours, dislikes, and likes, so I think I have included enough to suit everyone.

“Apparently they get a lot of travellers from everywhere, so I’m sure a few people from the Clarence Valley will enjoy the doors when they stay there.”

To see artworks from Vicki, Ray and students who go to her classes visit R & V Art on Facebook.