Kerry Thompson began life as a Canadian.
In 1973, after studying zoology in Toronto, she ventured to Australia with a guitar and a backpack, got a shock eating Vegemite and became Kerry Millard, a rural veterinarian. Seven moves and a baby or two later saw her reach Sydney in 1984 where she gave birth again and became an Australian.
Not having quite enough excitement with three kids under four she brought home a wacky dog and ended up taking him to a dog training club so he could learn how to be a dog properly. She drew some cartoons for their newsletter which people seemed to like, and accidentally fell into being an award-winning cartoonist drawing for publications including The Sydney Morning Herald and Medical Observer, and twice being voted Best Single Gag Cartoon Artist by the Australian Cartoonists' Association.
Kerry approached publishers in 1990 with hopes of drawing for children's books and has now illustrated about 24 including Ark in The Park by Wendy Orr which was Children's Book Council Book of The Year, Younger Readers 1995, Nim's Island also by Wendy Orr which is published worldwide in 21 languages and has been made into a movie starring Jodie Foster in which Kerry appears for 1 ½ seconds, and My Sister Has a Big Black Beard from the unique and amazing brain of Duncan Ball, friend of Selby the Talking Dog.
Kerry has both written and illustrated two books under her nom de plume (Millard): Gordon's Biscuit, Penguin Books (which was read on Play School – how exciting is that!!??) and Quincy and Oscar, ABC Books.
More recently Kerry has discovered acrylic paints and canvas which allow her to create works bigger than 10 cm square using as much colour as she wants, going in whatever direction the painting takes her, without a deadline. She has chosen to paint as Thompson although many were signed “Millard” before she chose to paint under her proper name.
Kerry has had varied life experience including travelling to Russia with Patch Adams and a group of clowns from 13 countries to play with kids in hospitals and orphanages. She had to fly from Sydney to Moscow on her own...with a stopover in Bangkok ... dressed as a clown. But that's another story...
To learn more about other aspects of her work, visit her website.
Stay tuned. This is just the beginning...
P.S. If you go to September 4 2008 on her blog (www.kerrymillard.com) you'll find out what happened in France and why she and her GPS are no longer on speaking terms.
