COFFS Harbour resident and artist Elisabeth Bor started dabbling in painting before she could walk, as a baby sitting on her father’s lap as he painted his nature-inspired artworks in her homeland of the Netherlands.

Having opened her garage gallery at her home at 26 Beryl Street, Coffs Harbour, Elisabeth has just changed her weekly open day to Thursdays instead of the former Saturdays.

The garage gallery is “out the back”, where she welcomes visitors to browse or buy from her numerous unique works.

“There’s a gallery full of both acrylic and oil paintings on canvas and ceramics, and a hallway with more works,” Elisabeth told News Of The Area.

“I’m big on colours, I love bright colours and flowers, native flowers.

“I also work in ceramics and like to do native animals; everything is a bit different, quirky not exact,” she says.

Working in “big and small sizes”, Elisabeth has a variety of animal pieces, and especially favouring water creatures, turtles and fish, many manners of fish-inspired works, bowls with fish in them and platters with fish on them.

Having lived in Coffs for ten years, moving from Lennox Head, Elisabeth and her family first arrived in Australia on the west coast.

“We had a big native flower farm for export in WA which we ran for 25 years.

“As well as being a painter, my father was also a florist, and so I was trained in the Netherlands as a florist and then I went to school for painting.

“We had a very good flower shop, but I wanted to get away from the Netherlands because it’s so cold, there’s pollution and you cannot fish.

“So we came to WA where we had a big block of land.

“There was a creek on the block we bought, and we could go to the beach a lot and fish.

“My mother-in-law came to us in WA and couldn’t believe we could fish here, totally different to the Netherlands.”

Here in Coffs Elisabeth continues her love of flowers with a 1000 sqm block.

“I work a lot in the garden with the flowers, and am always creating something new with my art, too,” she said.

By Andrea FERRARI