Mural artist Deborah Parker smiles as she puts the finishing touches on hydrangeas and sunflowers on the once-drab walls of a charity's book shop.
The 59-year-old from Port Stephens has painted three sides of the building with bright rural scenes in a matter of days, despite living with constant nerve pain from an illness in her 20s.
She paints fast, with 30 years' experience as an artist and teacher.
This mural, in Gloucester on the Mid North Coast, is the latest in a series she has created in regional NSW towns.
"My dream was always to travel around Australia and do murals," Ms Parker said.
"Never did I think my dream would come true."
'Coming back to life'
Ms Parker's career as an artist began at age 27 after she contracted Japanese encephalitis, a mosquito-borne disease.
"I nearly didn't make it — I was revived, and coming back to life and walking again, my lungs were collapsed. I wasn't well," she said.
"I don't like to talk about it. I still have a numb leg and I did pain management lessons to manage my nerve pain."
After 12 months of recovery, with some encouragement from her dad, she began to teach adult art classes at a community centre in Melbourne — a change from her previous work in retail and family daycare.
Ms Parker said her art helped her cope mentally with her debilitating condition.
"I find that my art is one of the best therapies I've ever had," she said.
"It's like any illness, there is the mental illness that goes with it — one minute you're walking and the next you're flat on your back.
"I had a two-year-old and a four-year-old and it caused a lot of problems in my life, financially, mentally and physically."
Suffering post-traumatic stress disorder, she found making and teaching art great tools to help her mental and emotional wellbeing.
Ms Parker said she wanted to share what she had learned with people living with a disability.
"It helped me so much, especially with the central nervous system and the transmitters of the brain," she said.
"When people are branded with something [like an illness], it's easy just to put yourself in a box — I don't believe in that.
"Everyone is an artist. I believe all art is therapy, whatever medium. I encourage everyone to engage in some kind of art."
Murals on the move
Until 2020, Ms Parker was teaching private art lessons in people's homes, but COVID lockdowns stopped that.
Then her life took on a new direction.
"I couldn't work in disability work and teaching, so I decided to start doing murals outdoors," she said.
Ms Parker advertised on Facebook and started getting some mural jobs.
"Everyone was sitting at home looking at plain walls and fences and little sheds," she said.
"It was a perfect time to start beautifying and enhancing people's backyards."
In order to become a travelling artist, she bought a $200 van she called "Bongo", with only one seat and 400,000 kilometres on the odometer, from a "guy at a hippie junk shop".
Ms Parker registered it and painted it with a colourful design.
"It's the best business card I've ever bought," she said.
Beautifying regional towns
Ms Parker is keen to keep adding a dash of colour to country towns.
"I really want to beautify every regional town I drive into," she said.
"If I'm driving along — and it might be a little bit illegal — but if I see graffiti on a bus stop and it's ugly, I'll pull over.
"Ten minutes later, I've done a mural picture and I move on."
Ms Parker tags her work on community Facebook pages and said she was often asked back to do more "graffiti fix-up" murals.
She believes every person leaving graffiti is "a little artist ready to bloom".
"If every town had a [dedicated graffiti] wall for children to be creative we'd [develop] many more artists out there in the community," she said.
"I've always said in life, [only] fret the big stuff. When you've died and come back, it's all small stuff."
