"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.

 

The Struggle for Something New

I was sitting in a small seaside village on the west coast of France last year (Granville), trying to extract some inspiration and direction for a new body of Art. In previous years I had painted oil on canvases and enjoyed it enormously. But each morning when I woke up and studied the pieces, I felt they missed the point.

In the days prior to Granville, I had gone back to the Musee D'Orsay in Paris, with a view of studying the works on the top floor from purely an analytical and technical point of view, and not that of an ogling tourist. The names didn't matter. At the end of 5 absorbing hours and a journal full of notes and studies, I caught the train west.

I sat in my hotel room for 4 days, analysing what I had written and what is was about certain works that  appealed beyond the norm. Patterns emerged. Techniques were revealed. Themes unfolded. A new body of ideas was born.

A week later I was back in my studio on the Sunshine Coast and raring to explore these yet to be realised images. Ideas had yet to be given form. I had expected to continue working in paint, but thought initially, I could capture the necessary spontaneity and energy of my ideas rapidly, with charcoal and white pastel on brown Kraft paper, a handful of erasers to eradicate and cut back in with, and a clutch of 7B's for quick-fire mark making. Nothing fussy. Nothing precious.

The energy and fun that was lacking in those morning paintings, was to reveal itself.