FOR about 34 years, Westmeadows resident Karen Lovett denied her Aboriginal heritage, so much so that she told her Aboriginal father and her twin sister she was white.

It wasn’t until she began making Aboriginal art that she felt a connection with the culture she had lost and which had subsequently led to her winning the Premier’s Award for the Western Region Indigenous Art Show last month.

Karen and her twin sister Sharyn grew up in foster homes as state wards from the age of four months until they were 18.

She said the experience made it difficult to identify with her culture and her children.

“We were told we were a loophole in the system and the only thing that got through that was a snake,” she said.

In Karen’s artwork, that white snake tangled with another as she struggled with her identity.

“The white snake represents me and the black snake my sister,” she said.

“Because I lost Aboriginality and she kept it.”

It wasn’t until five years ago, at 39, that she went back to her community.

She said the pull came from her father.

“I didn’t have an Aboriginal upbringing. But ever since my dad passed away it’s like I got sent pictures,” she said.

She said her father was worried she’d lost all Aboriginality.

“Honestly I can’t draw, these pictures just come out fantastically. He helps me. He helps me get back into a culture I denied myself, or people denied me.”

But Karen hit a roadblock when she approached the National Gallery of Victoria with a dot painting and they said dot painting was not a part of her heritage.

“I stopped painting for about a year-and-a-half to two years. It was a real shock,” she said. Karen’s mother-in-law took her to Kangan Batman TAFE to learn about the art from the Victorian Koori heritage.

“After studying for four years I discovered I was a Victorian Koori. So we do more line work rather than dotting,” she said.

She is now studying to be a teacher at the Indigenous Education Centre at Kangan Batman TAFE and is hoping to make a difference to others like herself.

“It’s important that state wards know you have to find that one person that believes in you and grab them with both hands and it’s amazing what can be done,” she said.

“A lot of my pictures are to say sorry, and I’m back where I should have been,” she said.

Karen won the Arnold Davis Scholarship in 2007 and was awarded the Victorian Aboriginal Education Association indigenous student of the year in 2008.