Beverley Maclean

The gallery has lost a great friend and supporter with the death last week of Beverley Maclean. How this clever, elegant woman put up with the loud music, snappy dog, tight deadlines and general chaos of our gallery for so many years we will never know, but we are very glad she did.

In 1993 invitations for Beverley Maclean from a rival gallery started mistakenly being delivered to me instead of Beverley who lived in the next street. We sent them on and added her to our mailing list. Eventually she started calling in and we never looked back. Beverley had owned a print gallery in Geelong for a few years before moving to Melbourne when her husband, Don, was transferred with work.

Beverley still had a stock of works on paper by modern artists we admired and was responsible for our exhibition of watercolours, drawings and prints by Mary Macqueen in 1999 and was very helpful with our Eric Thake exhibitions of 2005 and 2009.

When the economy was flat and sales were slow she bought feature works as a vote of confidence and as I look back at some of her purchases I am reminded of the depth and wisdom of her great support.

In the words of Joni Mitchell "Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you've got until it's gone". Beverley is very sadly missed by Bridget, Rena, Beverley, Caroline, John, Michael, Edward and all our extended families and gallery community.