“I hated the way we treated people and \u2026 I hated having so many bosses.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Campbell’s weekends of pottering in the garden barefoot and making mosaics were the inspiration to leave his 9-5.<\/p>\n
“One day, he walked out of the bank saying, ‘I cannot do this anymore. It’s soul destroying,'” Didi said.<\/p>\n
“He threw away his shoes and his tie and said, ‘I will never wear either again.’ And he hasn’t.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Barefoot ceramics an OHS ‘nightmare’<\/p>\n
Going barefoot while cutting glass for elaborate mosaics sounds like it could go wrong very quickly.<\/p>\n
Campbell is barefoot full time and said he’d become very conscious of where he was stepping.<\/p>\n
“Part of the reason I went barefoot initially was to harden my feet up so I could work on ceramics,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And now I can walk on glass or anything and it doesn’t really seem to penetrate.”<\/p>\n
But he’s still careful where he walks.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/54c7c811ec8eb676217bc00f5aa85558.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Kari Didi and Brett Campbell working on the “massive jigsaw”. (Supplied: Sunshine Coast Videography)<\/p>\n
The Kissing Project<\/p>\n
When Campbell first suggested recreating the world’s most famous kiss through mosaic, he wrote it off as too challenging because of the amount of gold involved.<\/p>\n
Didi’s ceramicist skills came to the fore, using gold glaze and creating specialty tiles for the artwork.<\/p>\n
Despite her creativity in utilising alternative techniques, the finished piece required a lot of gold leaf, which has exploded in price, more than doubling over the past six years.<\/p>\n
Six years ago booklets of gold leaf cost $95 a piece, now it’s about $230.<\/p>\n
“That’s how much gold has risen in these past few years,” Didi said. “So, there’s thousands of dollars of actual gold in it, millions of hours of work in it.”<\/p>\n
As the mosaic grew, so did the relationship.<\/p>\n
“Over six years, of course, our relationship has developed,” Didi said.<\/p>\n
“We’d both look forward to those days when we’d get to do this massive jigsaw together.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
![\"close](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/da31d94cb84f1699b7a61ce804108256.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
The Kiss mosaic is finished with thousands of dollars of gold leaf.\u00a0 (Supplied: Sunshine Coast Videography)<\/p>\n
What’s next?<\/p>\n
The life-sized mosaic, measuring 180cm x 180cm, is on display at the Maleny Yoga Shed.<\/p>\n
It’s a weighty piece, which requires a strong wall to hold it, but the couple hopes to lend it to a space where it can be admired by the community before finding its forever home.<\/p>\n
Campbell and Did plan to use the funds from the sale of the piece to start a community art studio and, of course, another collaboration.<\/p>\n
“It wouldn’t surprise me if we decide to make another artwork. We might get bored without one together, I reckon,” Campbell said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Kiss by Austrian painter Gustav Klimt has captured the imagination of generations of art lovers as one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569385,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[267],"tags":[18890,365,362,363,364,153653,93374,51178,366,18,117,242759,19,17,169079,242758,44949,5,22825,242757],"class_list":["post-569384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-artist","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-banker","tag-career-change","tag-ceramic","tag-design","tag-eire","tag-entertainment","tag-gold-leaf","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-klimt","tag-mosaic","tag-mural","tag-news","tag-sunshine-coast","tag-the-kiss"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116864877092935476","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569384"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569384\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Mosaic](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/acdfb1ff5674938f05bbdc1c5d5f5c5b.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n