Irena Sibley
Illustrator
Lithuanian-born Australian artist, writer, and illustrator of children's books who wrote The Bilbies' First Easter, and When the Sun Took the Colours Away. In 2001, she wrote Zara's Zoo.
She established the art department at Xavier Preparatory School. She published her first book "Rainbow" in 1980.
She was a passionate environmentalist and was particularly enamored of native Australian plants and animals.
Her parents escaped Communist-occupied Lithuania in 1946 while she was a toddler. She married artist Andrew Sibley in 1967. The couple had two sons: Benedict and Jonathan.
She and Charles Conder were fellow Australian artists.