I tell my mother about this memory, many years later. She says my father was painting the corrugated iron fence that separated our backyard from the neighbour's. My father held me on his hip as he painted. I was naked except for a nappy, my plump eight-month-old limbs enjoying their first summer. Then, the terrible shriek of a baby in pain. Panicked, they checked my whole body, found redness on my leg. A rag soaked in mineral turpentine had been hooked into the belt of my father's jeans. I had a chemical burn.

 

The brown fence is a constant of my childhood. I hate its shade of brown, the same colour of the vinyl arms of the hand-me-down couch we got from my grandparents. The same brown that often gets paired with orange, screaming 1970s. I'm a child of the 80s. I like pastels, hot-pink and turquoise. But I am drawn to the brown fence because of what lies beyond it.

 

Our neighbour is a large man, old and angry. His wife is dead. Mum says he is Catholic and he used to beat his wife. I don't understand what either of these things mean, but I'm scared when I hear the slow thud of his steps. Sometimes, when I'm sure the neighbour's not there, I climb onto the coal bin and peer into his backyard. Under my hands, the brown paint is flaky, dry.

 

The first person I know who goes to art-school is the neighbour's granddaughter. She and her daughter come to live next-door when I'm fifteen. She has a pierced nose, Doc Marten boots, op-shop clothes. Sometimes she talks non-stop, rambling stories about sex, drugs and art. Sometimes she lies in bed for days, and her daughter comes to stay at our place. They house-sit for us while we attend a family wedding and when we get home, our kitchen bench is covered in dirty cat-food cans. Each can crawling with fat white maggots.

 

I recently found a painting I made as a young child. It's a black creature, mouth open, huge eye. It's my childhood cat, Mountain. He's painted with a thick brush, each body part a single stroke. In his middle there's a smear of red paint slashed over a dab of white—an abscess. Mountain often fought with neighbourhood cats, their yowls twisting the night air, erratic and terrifying. His wounds fascinated me. Stickiness, pain, the drama of the body. Looking at this painting now, I think it's the best piece of art I'll ever make.

 

I didn't plan to major in painting at art-school. It felt like a waste. Other majors gave you access to specialist facilities. Dark-rooms, kilns, bandsaws. But I couldn't resist painting. The animal-twitch of the brush. Building a world from layers, choosing what to paint over, what to reveal. I'm still gripped by colour slipping over surface. Because paint is most potent when wet. And pain, bold painter of memory, always there.