I recently went to a Tamsin’s Table Sunday lunch (the best), and she fondly remembered that the best days at school were the days when you knew you had something excellent packed for lunch. How true!

However, my own first memory of this was not being the child with the good lunch, but being the child with lunch-envy of my friend Courtney, who pulled out a bag of cheese and bacon balls, while I pulled out a cheese and Vegemite sandwich. Oh, the things we crave when we’re young (what goes in cheese and bacon balls anyway? Not cheese or bacon that’s for sure!). Well, not to worry because now I am in charge of my own lunchbox and I don’t want to judge you, or be judged, or have lunch-envy, I just want to share my yum ‘ladies lunch’!

Kirsty Budge shuffled between watercolours, printmaking, photography and drawing before settling on oil painting as her primary mode of artistic expression, well into her adult life. Since then, the artist’s style has evolved in a slow and measured way, and her distinctive twisted, melancholy paintings have received many accolades – including, most recently, the 2021 Arthur Guy Memorial Painting Prize.

Kirsty’s home studio feels a little like an artist’s studio from the 1970s, perhaps somewhere in Europe, where obsessive art-making overtakes everyday life. Here Kirsty lives and works, constantly slipping between the boundaries of her all-consuming art practice, and her personal space.