Jane Millar remembers being four years old and getting ready for kindergarten as her mother Marjorie was studiously painting at the family table. 

“Mum just always loved to draw, to create, and was rarely without a pencil in her hand,” she says.

For decades, Marj, now aged 96, worked as an illustrator and cartoonist for greeting card companies and was the creative mind behind the well-known Brazen Hussies.

Illustrations of the risqué women scantily clad in lacy underwear, with generous cleavages and bright red lipstick, adorned birthday cards. 

Often they would have a drink or a cigarette in hand. 

While entertaining, the images also challenged the gender stereotypes of the time, with Marj wanting to capture the beauty of the female figure from a woman’s point of view.

Original paintings of Brazen Hussies are among a collection of Marj’s life’s work on display at her exhibition entitled, A Touch of Humour, at Gippsland’s Bond Street Event Centre.

Beginning in 1960

Marj’s first cartoon was published on the front page of the Gippsland Times in 1960, beginning a career as a commercial artist — a step that was rare for women at the time.

Marj took her work into a Regency cards office and was regularly given work to create and distribute cards before another major publisher, Valentine, also commissioned her to do work.

Marj did not consider what she was doing as something unusual or trailblazing. She loved cartooning and was happy to be paid for something she would be doing for free anyway.

Jane credits her grandmother, Beryl (Marj’s mother) for creating a space where women were always encouraged to dream big.

Beryl was influential in the suffragette movement and, according to Jane, gave Marj an environment where having any dream was not too big.

A daring dream

Born in 1927, Marj moved to Sale with her family and quickly became involved in the local art scene.

She simultaneously completed night school to get her diploma so that she could go on and teach at Sale High School.

Jane describes her mother as having a tenacity and vibrancy in all that she did, a passion that would see her take herself around the world, documenting her travels in beautifully sketched notebooks.

A recent fall has meant Marj has had to move out of the family home into assisted living, a decision that she didn’t make lightly.

“I think she was feeling fairly down in the dumps about having to go into a nursing home,” Jane says.

But during the overwhelming process of emptying out the family home, Marj decided to host a retrospective exhibition of her life’s work, celebrating more than 70 years in the art scene.

Her work spans cartoons, paintings, and drawings with a focus on colourful fantasy scenes and her avant-garde representations of women.

Celebrating women 

Most would recognise Marj’s iconic Brazen Hussies illustrations, which show daring and voluptuous cartoons of women and were recently collated into a birthday book.

In taking on the exhibition, Bond Street Gallery director David Wellington says Marj’s work is exemplary of her personality and her contribution to the local art scene will be honoured.

Marj’s launch on April 21 was heavily attended by art lovers, artists, and members of the Australian Cartoonists Association.

She has no intention of putting down her pens yet, despite turning 97 in September.

A Touch of Humour will exhibit at the Bond Street Event Centre until May 5.