Profile

As a child my grandfather taught me how to observe and draw horses. Living in the Blue Mountains, he took me walking every day in the school holidays and taught me bushcraft – how to mark my trail so I could retrace my steps, what to do if I saw a snake, how to listen to the birds. My father taught me to sail and to fish, and we spent many holidays on his boat, hearing the crows calling in the morning, the sound of the bellbird, the whip bird and the currawong, bathing under a waterfall, the gentle rocking of the boat as the water lapped against the hull.

Over the same years, my mother took me to all the fashionable contemporary art galleries in Sydney, which nurtured my love of painting. This was the age of Abstract Expressionism. I absorbed Australia’s own version of this, and it was brilliant and still excites me! When I left home, I travelled over much of Australia, sleeping under the stars, absorbing the starlight and the full feeling of remoteness in the desert regions. An inland lake near a mining town. The close, damp warmth of the tropics up north where birds, water-buffalo and insects abound!

All of these impressions sank deep into my being. I have tried to express their profound impact on me in images, to communicate something of the connection I feel with the earth and all the elements. Something of my own journey. Something perhaps ancient. And of the help of Spirit, which I feel is never far away.

1967-1969: studied Graphic Design National Art School Sydney
1970-1971: painted landscapes in the Outback
1971-1974: mixed exhibitions in Sydney Melbourne and London
1975-1976: summer workshops Ruskin School of Art Oxford
1976-1977: studied painting at Hammersmith School of Art London
1978-2013: mixed exhibitions in Harrogate and London
2013-2015: the realisation of a dream: building the studio
2015-present: I am working to express the impressions

Work represented in private collections in Australia, USA, Germany, France and UK, and drawings in the Archives of the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford