Kathleen and Leonard Shillam built their reputations as Queensland’s most recognised sculptors through their association with Brian and Marjorie Johnstone’s Johnstone Gallery, Brisbane. In addition to their individual and collaborative practices, the couple mentored younger artists and were instrumental in establishing the Society of Sculptors, Queensland, in 1969.

While Leonard was born in Brisbane, Devonshire-born Kathleen migrated here with her family from Wales in 1927. Both studied at Brisbane’s Central Technical College, where they met in 1932. As Kathleen recalled, in 1936, she, Leonard and artists Francis Lymburner and William Smith

rented a room that was part of the old Brisbane Courier. . . and it was from drawing there that we found sculpting . . . We were bridging the gap between Daphne Mayo and the young generation.

In 1937, Leonard won a Carnegie Corporation of New York grant administered by Mayo and travelled to England. Although he had no direct contact with British sculptor Henry Moore, the modernist’s monumental forms clearly struck a chord. Reclining woman 1942, carved from sandstone from Helidon in the Lockyer Valley, bears a resemblance to Moore’s Reclining woman 1929.