"The Train" (114.5 x 76.5 cm) Charcoal, Pastel, Graphite on Paper

Effortlessly we rolled around Europe in trains, buses and a little Fiat. 

Each day was full of the excitement and fun of new discoveries and adventures.

Monday, 4th April, 2008. 

We get on a plane 
and head for Europe.

France, 
where the heart is.

Photo taken from the steps of Sacre Coeur. 
 A balmy dusk descends over Paris.
Lost in the joy of it all.

"A Matter Of Timing" (114.5cm x 76.5cm) Charcoal, Pastel and Graphite on Paperr

Sometimes I wonder what the future holds. 

I realise I can manifest things in my life, but there is always a lot of serendipity as well. Luck. Chance. Right place at the right time. Who you know.

I fight to maintain the drive to pursue my passion at a level required to attract success. Right now, I am acutely aware of the finiteness of life, and the need for certain things in life to be achieved in order to feel the end arrives with a level of satisfaction and gratification. No regrets.

My art drives me, but the ability to do something with it on the big stage is in jeopardy of withering with age and understanding. 

At times I feel like I’m too late.

"Homeless?" (114.5cm x 76.5cm)

It’s hard to shake the influence travel has had on me. For a long time now, I have felt like I don’t belong back here, that home is somewhere over there.

I pine.

My art tells stories of my time in Europe. My morning coffee is always sitting in a cafe in Rue Richer, not here. I’ve entertained ideas of living under Pont Neuf, and dining from the best wheely bins at the back of the Buddha Bar. I walk the surreal coast of Cadaques with Dali and marvel at the cubed trees of Montpellier, and fiery pencil pines of Vincent’s world. 

Crescent moons and full moons get me dreaming. I see them in the sky back here, and realise they are soon to illuminate the far off places that I dream about. Effortlessly, they defy distance.

These are the landscapes of my creative wanderings. I just know that I am meant to be there.

"Almost 15 Minutes"

The drawing “Inanimate Objects” has won me some short-term fame recently. Andy Warhol said that everyone in the world will experience 15 minutes of fame at some time in their lives. I think this may be mine. I have never been in an art competition and decided to enter the 2010 Sunshine Coast Art Prize with this work.

It was 6.30pm, Friday the 14th of May when I went to the Post Office and picked up an A4 envelope. Inside was a letter from the Sunshine Coast Regional Gallery which in part read, “We are pleased to inform you that you have been selected as a finalist and we invite you to submit the work (Inanimate Objects) for the Prize exhibition” It was sent on the 11th of May, my birthday. I was so, so chuffed!

For a while there I was flavour of the month. The local Hinterland Times did an article on me and the other successful entrants from up on the “Range” and again, I was quite chuffed. Then a weekly paper down on the coast with a circulation of 70,000 rang and asked if they could do a feature on my work. They even sent a photographer up to my Maleny studio, with all the lights and paraphernalia, and my head began to swirl with all sorts of exotic notions of what fame and wealth might look like. When the final edition of Weekender went to press, they had used my art strikingly as the front cover. The work features a large self portrait, peering through spreading fingers at an inanimate object (a small, mocking porcelain lion). 

As I walked the streets on the day of the papers delivery, there in the front yards, lying face-up on the grass, wrapped in plastic, was the imposing black and white image of Peter Hollard. 70,000 thousand of them stalking me and peering back at me, in the ultimate collective mock by an inanimate object. (But after that, I swear, the people of the Sunshine Coast recognised me as I moved amongst them and probably stopped, whispered and pointed as I passed) 

I went to the opening night, confident. I left a little disillusioned. (Does anyone really get abstraction?) I hung the work for two months in that gallery, and only asked enough to cover a return airfare to Europe. The work was returned to my place the other day.

It’s many weeks later now. Consigned to the world of inanimate objects, it sits, still covered in bubble wrap, in a quiet corner of my house.  I’ve decided that the work has had its 15 minutes, but I’m yet to have mine.  

"Inanimate Objects" (114.5cm x 76.5cm)

I am a lover, not a fighter, but on occasions have felt the need to own a gun. I thought about carrying it in my car for the sole purpose of using it to shoot out all the green traffic lights, that mock me by turning red as I approach. The Roman philosopher Seneca, spoke of such feelings of persecution by inanimate objects, just before his execution in AD 65. So it’s an age old condition and I’m in pretty good company.

Two thousand years later, the pencil falling on the floor is still an act designed to purposefully frustrate me. As enlightened and intelligent and reasoned as I am, these things still goad, tease and torment. 

I curse the inanimate object, that taunts me daily and causes me to question all things, including the fairness of life.

"The Old Man And Buddha" (114.5 x 76.5cm)

There's a place in Paris, that takes my breath away. Nestled behind large, ornate, black wrought iron gates is a door that leads into a little romantic escapism.

The Buddha-bar is in rue Boissy d’Anglas. It is a half lit fantasy world inhabited by an electric blue dragon, enamel red chandeliers and a gilded two story buddha that oversees this setting, where French and Asian seamlessly fuse in style, mood and food.

But above all, it is home to a sound that I have learnt to love and create with in my studio. Music from the world is melded here, a rich stir fry that infuses my spirit with a melancholy that transports me to the other side when I am in the depths of making art. 

There’s a fashionable trend in the west to pursue some essence of Buddhism, without a desire to commit to all the rigours the discipline requires. In our material world it sits awkwardly, for at its heart is a simple life. A commitment to a set of straight forward fundamentals that allow us to embrace life with little. 

As I looked out my hotel window in Paris, I realised the old man I had watched across the road, sitting on his street corner day after day, in a quiet and dignified  manner, had it.

"A Life Of Cube" (114.5 x 76.5cm) Charcoal, pastel and graphite on paper.

The artist lives a life of observation and questions. 

They respond with visual commentaries.

The cube appeared after my first trip overseas. My initial concerns of not being able to survive in countries with strange languages, signs, timetables, currencies and customs soon gave way to the excitement of these differences. I realized I could adapt, and that in fact I was a very self contained, self sufficient and adaptable package. A box of capabilities. Place me anywhere in the world, and I could survive. 

I place myself in my art as a cube. And onto the faces are tattooed the icons that are pictorial representations of my journey so far.

"Difficult Pleasures" 114.5cm x 76.5cm, Graphite, charcoal and pastel on paper.

I place all artists on a pedestal. Even those I don’t understand. Unique beings that walk amongst us. Questioners, seekers, provokers, illuminators. I like this idea.

They are often misunderstood, gentle, passive and eloquent. I like this idea also.

They are singular. They march to the beat of their own drum, and from the outside, are believed to have received a “gift”, but maybe the universe has  just chosen them to speak through.

Few realise the endless hours of practice and self discipline that allows these talents to be realised, and mostly for little reward. I love the artist, but they are under valued.

Brett Whitely spoke of the need for every artist to acknowledge their “gift” and use it. It is not an option, but an imperative of being born with it, to realise it. You have no choice in the matter.

I am often weighed down by this “most difficult pleasure”. On occasions, I hide behind my talent in fear.

"Ladders" (114.5 x 76.5 cm)

Ladders appear often in my work. They are intended for ascending only. I aspire to loftier heights in life and art. 

I first recognized the significance of ladders as I listened to the Waterboys song, “Whole of the Moon”. The chorus has become my mission statement in life, to try to see the big picture. I hope to quietly leave this place, with that beautiful song playing all around me. 

“A torch in your pocket and the wind at your heels,

You climbed on a ladder and you know how it feels

to get to high, 

too far,

too soon,

I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon

"To Search In Shifting Sands" (114.5 x 76.5 cm)

I often feel removed from my surroundings (or do I remove myself?) 

I watch and listen. I have formed strong opinions on all sorts of topics, but am able to consider and appreciate many other points of view as well. I consider all sides of an argument. 

We mindlessly follow the popular opinion of the majority, believing collectively they must be right. How could so many be wrong? For thousands of years popular opinion considered the world to be flat, until just one man had the courage to question this “truth”. 

Society panders to the “truths” of an ignorant majority. 

Like some of the lofty statues I saw overseas, I feel removed from it all. I look down and silently consider the shifting sands around me. So often, my truth doesn’t seem to fit the majority. Sometimes I feel like I don’t fit anywhere any more. I’m looking for a door.

I've let this site slip for a while, not due to apathy, but due to a furious need to create artwork.

Months spent in my studio. Standing at my easel from early morning, until late in the afternoon. Many CDs later, and with numerous sticks of incense lying in ash, I create. I am unaware of the world, I am lost. At a certain point I cease to exist in the work, and the work takes over. These are the most joyous of moments.

Timeless happiness born out of the simplest of elements. Paper, charcoal, pastel.