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I am fundamentally a painter of the land. All of my work is based primarily on my affection for the Australian bush and my adventures within it. I love the chaos of the landscape, the colour of rocks and trees, the dryness of the earth and the layers of history and culture that are intricately woven within it.
My earliest influences were predictably Fred Williams with his iconic aerial view landscapes of the interior of Australia, his high horizon lines and the earthy minimalist palette.
Later I fell in love with the paintings of Western Australian artist, Robert Juniper. I loved that he employed gold leaf and mixed media in his paintings. He used iconic imagery that symbolized the gold rush and the mining industry of WA, but also connected with the idea of the landscape being a precious commodity that needs to be valued and nurtured. His seemingly random motifs are scattered in a flattened horizon and have a narrative that is based on stories or events relating to the land and the people who lived on it.
My painting is very process orientated. I paint in layers of emotive colour and mark that bury and reveal iconic symbols, redefined images, imperfections, motifs, and past experiences. I have a natural feeling for ornament and pattern and have many cultural influences including those of Persian miniatures, Asiatic art, and the art of Utopia. I love vast empty spaces with arbitrarily scattered objects and the glimpses of things buried, lost, forgotten in the chaos of life. My concerns lie with the idea of finding meaning out of apparent confusion, of finding order out of chaos, of simplifying spaces and revealing possibilities from underlying structures. Essentially the work is about trying to find poetry and truth within the subject. I am searching for a spiritual way of demonstrating beauty in the chaotic naturalness of the Australian bush, our way of life and our connection with land.