Ivy Shore

Ivy Shore, daughter of a South Australian suffragette, trained as a seamstress before marrying a financier and moving to Vaucluse. Bored, she enrolled in painting classes with Graeme Inson, a disciple of Max Meldrum’s. Separating from her husband in 1960, she bought a house in Ocean Street Woollahra and in 1962, soon after Shore was widowed, Inson moved in. Through the 1960s Shore continued to develop her artistic skills under Inson, and he in turn eventually dubbed her ‘my greatest student.’ She first entered the Portia Geach competition in 1976; she won it in 1979 with the portrait of Elliott. Inson was so irritated by the style of the portrait – a departure from the Meldrum method - that he went to live in his studio, but he returned home after a week. Shore used her prize-money to have a studio built by architect Peter Moffitt above the garage of her house, and painted there out of sight of Inson. Over the coming years Shore continued to exhibit in the Portia Geach award and the Royal Easter Show Art Prize Exhibition. In 1993, she painted Influences, a tribute to the five people who had most influenced her, showing Henry Hanke, Robert Haines, Justin O'Brien, Graeme Inson and Lloyd Rees at a dinner table, Inson holding forth with a wine glass in hand. This painting now hangs in The Dundee Arms Hotel with others, including Inson’s favourite of his own portraits of Shore.