"Although there is a bleakness in some of the images that I did from East Timor and there are some that are fairly bleak although they're not as I said they're not anything terrible but there are East Timorese refugees sitting there you know and you just ... look from their face. I don't know whether I've captured it but when I saw some of them you're thinking you know what have you been through and you can't even begin to imagine.

There's also, there is also humour and there is also some of the camaraderie and some of the funny things that I did see over there with the Australian Army and also with like the East Timorese children which are everywhere, funny little characters. When I'm trying to draw they're standing in front of me, love being drawn so I've got lots of drawings of them. I've also got a drawing of a young female soldier who wanted me to do a nude drawing of her so she could send it to her boyfriend. So you know I've got some funny things like that and also I was at the Tour of Duty Concert which was the one with Kylie Minogue and John Farnham just before Christmas so you know I've ... and Christmas itself of course which had Australian soldiers wearing funny hats and reindeer horns and stuff like that so there are some quite light things as well as something which I think is a bit heavier."

WENDY SHARPE, AUSTRALIAN OFFICIAL WAR ARTIST