It was 1981 and I had recently returned from working overseas to be closer to home to support my mother who was sick.  I had also decided to start up an employment agency in Auckland (the Lorne Street Bureau) with a few acquaintances, Jan Richards, Sue Bickley and Trelise Cooper. My work at the Lorne Street Bureau was enjoyable and keeping me busy but I was missing a creative outlet. I came across a painting and drawing night class at Selwyn College and enrolled in February and thinking it would fill this creative gap. Who’d have thought that enrolling in this class was the catalyst to a total change in my life when I meet the tutor: Greg Whitecliffe.

I was very excited to be attending the class but disappointed to find out it was a painting class and not a drawing class as advertised, and I was perhaps a bit vocal about this.   The tutor Greg Whitecliffe was also a little disappointed that I wasn’t impressed by his painting demonstration and according to others in the class, he decided he needed to take me out to lunch and make friends with me instead!!  To put a long story short, he invited me over lunch to “see his etchings” can you believe it!  My partners at the Lorne Street Bureau all chuckled when I told them, but true to his word the next week during my lunch break I had indeed been to his gallery to see his etchings.  Greg was charming and not pushy and before long the two of us were dating. 

Greg's Gallery in Parnell 

Greg was running a small gallery on the mezzanine of an antique shop at 381 Parnell Road, at the time it was called Whitecliffe Galleries. He had two friends Margaret Morrison and Annie Wills working part time for him so he could continue to bring in money as a postie and also part time teaching at Selwyn College and at the Auckland Society of the Arts. He was a great teacher, he had a natural ability to make things look easy and communicate with confidence on the subject. His demonstrations always confirmed this to his students, except me initially of course.

Well, that was the start of my relationship with Greg who was the tutor.  It was a whirlwind courtship and within the year of meeting one another he proposed! I heard through a dear friend recently, Robert (Bob) Skinner that by the time I was invited to his first show (Greg was fundraising for the Crippled Childrens Society, now called CCS Disability Action), only a few short weeks later, he had decided that he was going to marry me. This turned out to be true, and Bob later went on to serve on the College’s advisory board and was the first Education Convener. Bob was also a Groomsman for Greg and is now the godfather to my eldest daughter Amber.

When Greg proposed to me at Mount Eden gardens in December of 1981, initially I didn’t say yes as I needed to think about it.  I got back to him a few days later and said YES I would marry him if we started a business together and as he was so cleaver and talented at teaching and his art, we thought why not open our own art school?

I stopped working at the Lourne Street Bureau in August 1982 and left the other 3 to continue it.

Getting married

Image 4: Photograph of Wedding party: Bob Skinner, Nicola Pearce, Greg Whitecliffe, Michele Whitecliffe, Sally Caldwell and Bruce Bennett. 

Greg and I were married on 23^rd of July 1982 at St Teresa Catholic Church in my hometown of Karori Wellington. Margaret Morris and Annie Wills looked after his business while we had a one week honeymoon driving back from Wellington to Auckland. Along the way he showed me his old school in the Wairarapa (Rathkeale College), met some of his early school friends and we stopped to visit some of the art galleries where he had had exhibitions at and the owners had become good friends. 

In the next blog post I will tell you about how we took the idea of starting an art school and made it a reality at our first campus in Parnell. In the future we will also be sharing stories from Friends, Faculty and Students who helped make our dream a reality.