SHEPPARTON-BASED artist Mimi Leung’s new exhibition, "Growing up with you", is now showing at Benalla Art Gallery, featuring illustrations, poetry, projected animation and a large-scale community "drawing wall".

The title of the show refers to both Leung’s relationship with her art practice, and with her children – reflecting on how her attitudes to art and her own practice have changed as she has grown up and had kids.

Leung explained: “Art and drawing have always been central to who I am."

"My earliest memories are of drawing, sketching and painting," she said.

"Becoming a mother really challenged the time, energy and brain capacity I had to spend with art.

"Instead of resisting these changes as I initially did, I began to accept and welcome them into my practice and allowed them to influence the meaning I find in making art.”

Starting with a selection of works from early in her illustration career, this exhibition broadly shows the shift in focus and the artist’s "growing up" – as an artist, as a mother, as a human – and traces her journey from trauma to healing through both commercial and non-commercial work.

The exhibition features an animated poem projection about the complexities of parent-child relationships in multicultural families and intergenerational trauma.

Leung delivered prominent illustration and animation campaigns for clients including Transport For London, Disney Australia, Samsung, Slurpee and The New York Times.

She is inviting children (and children at heart) to contribute to an evolving illustration mural within the exhibition by colouring and drawing on the work.

The large-scale collaborative mural, measuring over 7 metres, centres around a depiction of Leung and her daughters drawing together, from which creative expression explodes in a riot of colour and characters.

Benalla Art Gallery director Eric Nash said the exhibition is a credit to one of the most distinctive and dedicated creative professionals in the region.

"The mural itself is a joy, not only for children, but also for adults, stirring nostalgia through the host of characters featured, from Princess Peach to My Little Pony; The Little Mermaid to Elsa; Pikachu to Bluey and Bingo,” he said.

Community members have further opportunity to hear directly from the artist during an "in conversation" session at 10am on Monday, August 5.

The exhibition runs until August 18.