Born Jacqueline Lourie in June 1931, in the rolling farming country around Hunterville in the Rangitikei, she was the only girl among five children. Her father used to take her riding and she found her best friends were horses. With an abiding natural talent for drawing, Jackie began at the age of four. When she wasn’t riding the horses, she was drawing them.
Although her life was very busy with work on the farm and raising six boys, Jackie continued to draw and paint whenever she got the chance, on scraps of paper and the back of cigarette boxes.
Howard made Jackie a studio in the old dairy and washhouse behind the cottage and that’s when she started her night-time painting sessions. “How wonderful it was to be able to walk out of the studio and back down the path to the house, knowing that all the boys would be tucked up and Howard would be sound asleep too.” Howard decided Jackie needed a manager and her original studio was superseded in 1978 with a larger Quin’s car-shed-cum-studio. She produced many commissioned works here for friends and race-horse owners but she did find the deadlines stressful and would thankfully return to the freedom of her sketches.
See more about Jackie Williamson HERE.
