When I returned to Sydney, unpacked the boxes and arranged the books in a bookcase made to fit outside my bathroom, I discovered an oil painting I had done years before. Dated 1981, it shows a young man with radiant green skin and a thick swatch of yellow hair covering his ears (the most difficult part of a head to do). The lowering sky is "the shimmering tawny yellow of November wheat stubble", as Truman Capote describes, in his non-fiction novel In Cold Blood, a field where the neighbours of the dead family decide to burn those household items that were damaged during the murders. The glossy, Prussian-blue hills recede into a mournful faraway. I couldn’t believe I’d painted it and, ashamed, pushed it back in its slot.

More abandonment. But eight months later, while looking for something, I rediscovered the painting and gently removed it from the shelf. It stood among paperback and hardback novels, books of poetry and non-fiction, treasures. It now appealed to me in some unexpected, unfathomable way. Regretting my earlier aversion, I carefully placed it on the sideboard in the living room.

A story I read in the newspaper connected soulfully with this event. It was about the death in South Africa of Vladimir Tretchikoff, a wealthy Russian artist who had painted a famous kitsch icon. "Painted in 1952, Chinese Girl became the world’s biggest-selling print."

When I saw the illustration in the newspaper of Tretchikoff’s famous painting -- a woman with her blue face averted from the viewer above her yellow Chinese garb, her black hair hiding her ears -- it occurred to me that I’d been wrong to hide the product of my youthful exuberance. I was glad I’d decided to place it where it could be seen every day.