Phyllis McKillup b. 1918

  • Artist (Painter)
Used art therapy both voluntarily and in paid positions to assist women prisoners, Indigenous people, mentally and physically disabled people and the criminally insane. She was also a driving force behind a SA Parliament decision allowing prisoners to keep their newborn children. McKillup's career had many facets; she was not only a therapist, but also worked as a nurse during WWII and wrote a the

Painter, art therapist, art historian and nurse, served as a military nursing sister in the UK and France during WWII. In 1959 she settled in South Australia with her husband, son and daughter. She used art in her professional and voluntary work with women prisoners, including indigenous people, mental and blind patients and the criminally insane, and was instrumental in having the SA Parliament pass a law allowing prisoners to keep their new babies.

In 2001 she was awarded a PhD from Flinders University for her Fine Art thesis on SA artists Nora Heysen (b.1911), Ruth Tuck (b.1914), Barbara Leslie (b.1940) and Rosemary Gartlemann (b.1942) and 'the material, emotional and aesthetic conditions’ under which these women – all of whom painted professionally throughout their lives – expressed their creativity. Nominated by her daughter, Sarah Elizabeth McKillup, for inclusion in the Centenary of Federation Peoplescape on the lawns in front of Parliament House, Canberra, she was represented by a figure she had decorated with three self-portraits symbolising her professional life (a large academic and smaller nursing sister and WWII uniformed figures) and photographs.

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Writers:
Staff Writer
Date written:
1999
Last updated:
2011