INSPIRE: Whaling Museum curator Racquel Cavallaro dances through the landscape before putting it on canvas

She has quiet classical music playing in the background of her studio which overlooks Goode Beach and Frenchman Bay, a picture-perfect spot for contemplation and an artist’s easel. The artist herself, Racquel Cavallaro, is a former WA Academy of Performing Arts dancer and a bundle of positive energy bursting with ideas, movement and song. As trim as one of her artists’ brushes, she wears black paint-spattered yoga pants and just looks the part, equally artist or dancer, gliding around her small space pointing out various pieces and explaining the why, the where and the wonder of each. Art has always played a huge part in her life, be it on the dance floor or in her painting, and she believes strongly that it is vital to the human existence. “Art is so important, it plays a role in all the important times in our lives,” Cavallaro said. “For example, when someone dies or you lose someone you love, or there’s real heartache, you reach for a poem or a painting or music. “I was a dancer, I just had that creative instinct, but once the body didn’t do what it used to do, I had to find another language. “Because I had always drawn, I decided to hone those skills. “I think you have to learn the technical skills — they can be the difference and take you to a place of work or of passion. “I was learning the piano, but I got sick of it because I didn’t want to put the work in to hone those technical skills. “If what you are doing is work or passion, rote or repetition doesn’t stop you.” Her father was Italian, and although she was born in WA she always felt the pull of Italy, earning a residency as an artist in Roccella, a stunning Calabrian town on the Ionian Sea. It was hard work, sharing herself around different studios, but she went to polish her skills and did so, returning to Australia and then to Albany because she had family in the city and felt it was the best place to raise her son. Her favourite painters are Cezanne, Lucien Freud’s nudes and — best of all — Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring, but her own paintings are rooted in the environment around her spectacular home. Cavallaro’s work is colourful, though in a muted way, reflecting the brown, green and blue hues of the landscape she loves. “I go on long walks because I like to paint my surroundings, I just go into the landscape,” she said. “It’s hard to capture the vastness of the landscape in a small space like my studio, but I like the challenge.” One of her most striking images is a dead seagull and she has a picture of a lorikeet, also dead, which she thinks might be her next piece. “I’ve always painted dead birds, I think they are beautiful, still full of potential,” she said. “I want my pictures to tell a story. “With the seagull, for example, I was walking the beach and saw it as light and shadow, the subject matter was not that important. “The waves came and there was a fragility but also hope and promise and it was still so beautiful.” Even if it’s not for everyone’s mantelpiece, it’s true the painting draws the eye again, and again. “You can look at it technically, but you keep returning to it because it speaks to you in some way that is personal,” Cavallaro said. She sells her work regularly, including the dead birds, “lucrative is not a word I’d use,” she laughs, but she also has a day job. Cavallaro is the curator of the gallery at the Historic Whaling Station, plus she enjoys a side hustle called art lease, which helps Great Southern artists loan their work to local businesses. Her work was also part of the Albany Focus exhibition at the Gallows Gallery in Perth, a nine-day show last month which featured six outstanding artists from Albany as part of the 2026 bicentennial. Needing a bit of a rest now, she plans to take stock before deciding on her next move. She spins out of her studio and heads along the stepping stones to the main house which has a wall of windows framing a wonderful view that spans the whole of Frenchman Bay and beyond. So that’s her oasis of contemplation and calm, where the day-to-day stuff happens, the eating and sleeping. The studio is her hive of creativity where she has music, her brushes and her paint. “I love listening to music while I paint,” she said. “It’s all part of my creativity. “I know I’m not a dancer anymore – but in my head, I am.”