Fay Plamka, award-winning artist, commercial and court illustrator.
A PASSION FOR Portraiture By Melissa Walsh Photos Gary Sissons
F
ay Plamka is an award-winning artist, commercial and court illustrator, jeweller, tapestry designer, and teacher. Having arrived in Australia 70 years ago as a post-war refugee from Poland, she now calls the Mornington Peninsula home.
“I love being on the peninsula and came down here for the first time in 1997,” said Plamka from her home in Tootgarook. “Unfortunately my mother became ill and so I had to move away to look after her but returned five years ago and it is wonderful.”
Faye studied art at the National Gallery School of Victoria, then at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Art, Jerusalem, finally spending two years in Austria as assistant to the visionary Ernst Fuchs, a leader of the renowned Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
With every wall of the artist’s home covered in works of art that show the history of her life, her home is more like a gallery than a house.“I have always loved drawing and painting and remember as a child constantly drawing when I had the chance,” said 71 year old Plamka, who was born in a displaced persons camp in Germany, and came out to Australia with her family when she was 18 months of age. “My parents did not really believe in art as a career and so insisted I go to university to be a diplomat. I spoke four languages so it was a career I could have had.”
These days, Plamka continues to draw, paint, and create but from the quieter back streets of a tranquil southern peninsula town and talks to Peninsula Essence about life as an artist and her incredible journey to get here.
E ssence
44 | PENINSULA
September 2019