Mars Drum grew up on a farm in Banyena, Wimmera Victoria. She left home at eighteen to spend the next three decades "living the artful life", which included six years of art residencies and travel in Europe and Asia, obsessive video documentation of Melbourne’s fringe arts and counter-cultural happenings during the 90s, and even donning the burqa for a year as support for Muslim women following September 11, 2001. Drum’s ongoing series, titled “The True History of Ned Kelly and Burka Woman” has extended to over one hundred paintings which since 2008, has been presented in four solo exhibitions. Drum moved to Natimuk in February 2012, where she began working with disengaged and multicultural youth in arts. Drum was the Local Artist and creative producer of the Wow project, a public art enterprise exploring what belonging to place means to young members of Horsham's culturally diverse community, launched in June 2013. In Sept 2013, Drum moved to a beautiful location on the Wimmera river, bordering Dimboola and the Little Desert National Park, where she uses her riverside home and studio as a residential base, venue and meeting place for Melbourne artists and musicians, and also members of the local culturally diverse community. 

www.marsdrum.com

@mars.drum