The word rumpus is connected with notions of noisy commotion, chaos and uproar. Not generally
the things you imagine when you’re thinking about your perfect home. I guess this is why the
Rumpus Room was often located in a basement...out of sight out of mind.

These days we tend to call it a recreation room or games room, but essentially it’s still a space for
kids to be noisy and rambunctious. A room where a roaring lion would not feel out of place.

The room it was painted in was the previous owners games room where the baby grand piano
and billiard table have been left for us to enjoy and become a little noisier than usual. So it’s a
painting about a rumpus room painted in a rumpus room.

When the main character of a painting, like this roaring lion is so incredibly strong you can take it
in a couple of directions. All the companion cast members can roar along with it or they can
gather like a calming force around it. I had initially imagined a much darker painting but as soon
as I added the pink phone I knew it was going to be a softer, more gentle atmosphere even
though there was a bellowing lion in the middle of it all.

The phone was balanced by the seated flamingo below, photographed in Atlanta, Georgia during
nesting season. To the left of the flamingo is the pink coated statuette of Casanova, purchased
from a little costume store on the Grand Canal in Venice. Then the eye travels up the back of the
lion to the pink ears of the white rabbit photographed at a petting zoo in Albany WA. Then across
to the pink legs & beak of the kookaburra from our garden in Noosa and down to the white ibis
photographed at the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans who stands next to an owl from the Darling
Downs Zoo near Toowoomba who also features small pink details.

This Rumpus Room is a gathering of creatures and objects form all around the world and from
one side of Australia to the other. These travel stories are also what we bring back to our rumpus
rooms where we often display our souvenirs and treasures. Perhaps we don’t always have to be
raucous in our rumpus rooms, perhaps it’s also a place to put our feet up, relax and just be
ourselves.