Artist and filmmaker Dahl Collings and her husband, Geoffrey, were family friends and professional colleagues of poet and journalist Elizabeth Riddell. As a journalist, Riddell won a number of awards, including twice winning a Walkley Award. Riddell also won the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry in 1992 and the Patrick White Award in 1995.

This portrait of Riddell, with her cat Celestina, was painted on the balcony of the house she and her husband rented at Parsley Bay, Vaucluse. A Port Jackson pilot boat can be seen in the middle distance, on the right.