Isis-Rae Ronan, the owner of Tambourine Art Studio and Griffith artist, said that the months had been difficult for her personally, but she was excited to see the demand for art remained high.

"For me, it was a choice between health and being able to run workshops. I had this really nice space, I was just trying to figure out how to move forward," she explained.

"It was a tough period, it was three months without running workshops. With creatives, you find you have to buy a lot of materials up front just to run them," she said.

Lisa Taliano, the owner of Greengecko garden centre and art studio, said much the same.

"For me, it was a strange year since I worked in an essential service at the garden centre ... We were having workshops at the studio, we had to stop that," she explained.

"I've been doing an initiative called Connect the Dots to guide people around. By the time COVID hit, shops were closed... it had to go virtual."

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Looking wider, Australian artists James Bustar, Mark McConville and Lindsay Webb recently organised the 'Save the Arts' campaign pushing for more Federal support for creative industries. Mr Buster is less than happy with the state of things.

"The arts and creative industry are struggling every day to make ends meet, pay rent and put food on the table. We may be able to start performing gigs again, but we are fresh out of lockdown and entertainers are still struggling," he said.

Bustar said he was pleased with the recent news from Create NSW who recently announced Round 1 of the upcoming Arts and Cultural Funding Program, which will share $9.37 million amongst just under 200 recipients.

"This is a step in the right direction. This funding will help struggling artists in NSW, and I hope the rest of Australia will follow suit."

Mrs Ronan agreed that Create NSW was vital for regional arts in particular.

"We probably do need more of that. With funding, you can afford to do those extra things and work with different people," she said,

"Art is always a passion project, it's always on the side. All artists have other jobs."

Ms Taliano agreed.

"Art is important. It's not just 'look at that pretty thing.' We have great musicians here, we have great writers here, it's all of it."

"I'd love to see something happen, like how Leeton held a festival for creativity. Griffith has enough people to do that."

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