All these paintings are oils on canvas, although in some cases the canvas has been stretched over board. The viewer is enticed to enter these spaces and engage with them. I have deliberately avoided portraying scenes of awe inspiring grandeur, rather the emphasis is on space, the passage of time and quiet contemplation. When we are presented with these vast empty scenes we are confronted with the reality, perhaps even the insignificance of our condition. Our everyday travails are put into perspective.
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| Evening Millpond 2014 |
Some time back I heard some very ambient music towards the end of a BBC program called "James May At The Edge Of Space". Naturally the credits at the end of the program provided no details of the music, thus I began a year long search of the internet before finally discovering the music. It's called "Balthus Bemused By Colour" by Harold Budd. It's been around for 25 years and was the inspiration behind a new painting I completed recently. I have also reacquainted myself with 19th century Russian artists such as Ivan Aivazovsky who specialised in dreamy landscapes and seascapes. 91 cm x 137 cm.
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| Kintore Range 2014 |
This painting measures 102 cm x 137 cm. The Kintore Range is located near the southern end of the Northern Territory/Western Australia border. I have brought the two ridges in the distance closer together and changed the vegetation in order to achieve the depth I was after. The sky has been stylized to the same ends.
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Evening In The West Macdonalds
2013 |
This painting measures 96 cm x 110 cm. I enjoy the freedom of working on a larger format. With most of my previous works, I produced a small oil sketch prior to the final work, but now I go straight into the final painting.
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| Dunolly Plains 2013 |
A short distance from where I once lived on the outskirts of Dunolly in north-central Victoria is this featureless plain covered in scrub. Here, we are looking west on a warm summers evening. The American landscape artist Edward Hopper said one of the aims in his work was to paint a representation of the external world through the medium of the inner world. Scenes of quiet contemplation have always resonated with me.
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| The Entrance 2013 |
This painting is approximately 1 metre square and is the first of a series of larger format works I will be doing over the next few months. Many years ago I photographed a sunset at the foreshore near Middle Park in Melbourne and later I printed a black and white enlargement of the photo which has formed the basis of this work. The coastline in the distance is imaginary.
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| Bealiba Range 2 2013 |
Bealiba Range is located in the goldfields area of Northern Victoria. I wanted to explore the dry scrappy bushland scenery so typical of this area, relying on my abilities as a painter rather than on a challenging composition. The drought of the mid 2000's was in full swing at the time I photographed this scene.
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Wetlands At Warneet
2013 |
Warneet is located at the northern end of Westernport. I'm not sure if there was a bushfire through here or the trees died for some other reason. But I was mainly interested in capturing the evening light.
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Bealiba Range
2013 |
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| Sunny Day At Warneet 2013 |
The wetlands at Warneet provide opportunities to explore the scrappy bushland scenery so common in Victoria away from the highlands..
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| Bass Hills 2012 |
The rolling denuded hills of South Gippsland provide an interesting challenge in volume, juxtaposition and depth. I explored this area during the stormy, humid summer of 2010-11.
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Taking The Air 2012
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Werribee Mansion. The lighting effects were inspired by a moonlit night time scene of Venice painted by the 19th century artist Ippolito Caffi. Also, Turner's painting titled "Alnwick Castle, Northumberland" and nocturnal scenes painted by Jacob Van Ruisdael may have been an influence.
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Glen Forbes 2011
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Glen Forbes is located in South West Gippsland, near where I was living at the time. It was a cool summer evening when I photographed this scene. I made some changes to the sky but the landscape is largely unaltered.
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View From The North Tower
2007 |
This painting is based on a very poor photocopy of a photo taken as part of an engineering survey carried out on the former Willsmere Psychiatric Hospital in Kew, Melbourne. The sky is based on a landscape painted by John Mather in the Nineteenth Century.
