was also the first time she lived outside her family environment, and found herself with full-time artists. She collected items from the bushland and integrated them into floor-based art works. She only returned to Laos for the first time in after art school and has returned often to Laos and the communities along the Mekong River. She admits her visits influence her works. She is married to anthropologist Ashley Carruthers and has two children. In 2004 she moved to Canberra, Australia. Today she and her family spend time in Vietnam every year in the town of Hoi An and Savanhdary acknowledges the influence of Vietnam in her art. Works In the years after art school, her work integrated elements from Australian landscape and symbols from Laotian textiles. Her early works (1992 - 1994) were three-dimensional floor works. But by the mid-1990s, Vongpoothorn was creating textured works on paper and canvas. Time and motherhood helped her feel anchored in Australia and as the artist has said in interview:"Feeling at home in Australia is an anchor, it allows me the freedom to go back to the place of my birth in my mother’s village in Champasak and research for my current work. I guess the reason why the Australian landscape is not present in my current work is because I am home."Her paintings are said to evoke the chanting and music of Laos, and the Laotian community in Australia, which her father, a Buddhist monk, serves. Her work also reflects traditional crafts of Laos and Vietnam: "When you are living outside your place of origin you tend to feel more intense about the need to have and to acquire knowledge about your place of origin. I don’t want my parents to die not knowing who is going to continue with our tradition; I will be the one to continue with our culture and religious tradition."Her residencies in various countries influenced her experimental approach to art. In Vietnam she learned to weave with Bamboo. She came back from India with a series of delicate works on paper that echo the colours of traditional subcontinental painting. In Japan she pursued a project with poet Noriko Tanaka. She created a 2019 work (Footsteps to the Nigatsu-do) that consists of rubbings made from the sacred patterns found on the steps of the Nigatsu-do temple at Nara, embellished with Tanaka’s calligraphy and her own loose characters. Overall