Artist Statements

 REMNANTS OF DECAY 1991

     The emphasis in my work is not so much to reproduce a photographic image but to highlight reality by drawing attention to specific forms, colours and textures. The abstract patterns in rust or peeling paint, circles and stripes, and the composition of these elements form the basis of my interest. Rust is not treated as an evil but as an improving embellishment, as is the bleaching of timber and the breaking down of once painted surfaces.

     The objects of my attention are invariably old, in a conscious effort to preserve them as I saw them at a given moment in time.

  TIME AND TIDE  2010

I was born in Australia, have travelled the world and visited ancient sites in foreign countries. It made me wonder about my own heritage. The light, lifestyle and landscape of this country drew me back home. I hope my paintings reflect the unique qualities of Australia

My paintings are about the complex interaction between man, nature and location, and how they are affected by each other. Geometric forms of the industrial world that are transformed by the elements and time, tell of seasonal extremes and an unknown past.

Responding to the subject as if it was animate, I record its experiences like lifelines on its surface. The streaming, colourful, sometimes painful marks, give us no details of their origins. What might otherwise have been explained by a landscape setting, we must imagine for ourselves.