IT could be said that art was in Maureen Watts’s blood.

Sadly, the artist passed away last week, and a planned exhibition will now serve as a celebration of her life and art with the display at the Julia Street Creative Space from August 3 to August 31.

The exhibition comprises of pots, paintings, prints and textiles, and is just a snippet of the art Ms Watts spent a lifetime creating.

The Observer spoke to Ms Watts about her passion for art before her passing.

“Since childhood, I’ve always liked making stuff,” Ms Watts said.

One of the many pieces of work on display will be three panels of finely detailed crochet work.

Ms Watts said the three interconnected panels each took 450 hours to complete and depict the miraculous journey of light into flesh and transformation of flesh into spirit.

The three-panel series is called the ‘The Life and Times of the Humble Sardine’ and showcases various sea and avian creatures.

The panels are a far cry from Ms Watt’s first ever crochet piece which was a small doily made when she was just a child.

“One Christmas when I was five, I pestered my grandmother so much to teach me to crochet, that she finally gave in,” Ms Watt said.

Since then, Ms Watt has been going from strength to strength, learning various art disciplines including lace-making, collages, decorative quilting, drawing and pottery.

Much of her work has been on display at exhibitions throughout Victoria.

One such piece on display at the Glenelg Library is the Confederate Quilt which was the result of a challenge to make an art piece from an old book about to be thrown out.

“I chose to combine the idea of a comforter (often a community sewing project) with the main idea of the book (which was set in the American Civil War) which was about a boy on a painful journey through suffering and war, to discover himself,” Ms Watts said.

“I was able to get the coloured parts from the book, as well as some of the text. I used a traditional log cabin quilting pattern for the quilt.”

Pottery work by Ms Watts has been recently on display at the Ballarat Gallery.

“My work as an artist over the last 40 years has been more or less narrative-based, often with whimsical or humorous overtones,” Ms Watts said.

“My more recent works have focused on personal narratives with an emphasis on family.”

Ms Watts believes the best part of making art is in the process.

“Imagining a shape, developing the skills to bring it into being, solving the inevitable problems and then, arriving somewhere you didn’t quite expect to be, when it finally comes into being, a new thing on the earth,” she said.

Though no stranger to exhibitions, the Portland display is her first solo exhibition.

Asked how she felt seeing her completed work on display over the years, Ms Watts said it was a bit overwhelming.

A further indication that artistry is in the blood is the fact Ms Watt’s daughter Isobel Knowles has also taken up the discipline.

For Ms Knowles, her mother is a source of inspiration since she was a young child.

“I always wanted to be like her,” Ms Knowles said.