Artist’s Statement

I am coming up to 10 years in professional art practice. I work from my home studio in the Adelaide foothills, near a conservation park and bushland. Following a legal career focussing on the conservation of nature, I have dedicated much of my art practice to painting flowering Australian natives. Partly this is because I have grown to adore them. But mostly I paint Australian natives because they are whole. They don’t explain who they are. They are of the ancients. I love how their forms are of the earth. Out of the dirt grows something so distinctive. They arrive at the right time, without comment. No one tells them to be there. They just belong. And they are free.

Where I live I am surrounded by native plants and flowers. I enjoy foraging local wildflowers. I formulate them into sculptural arrangements. I take a lot of photographs. I begin by drawing my subject in charcoal, and often proceed to underpainting in washy acrylic. I paint the final layer with thickened oil paint. I apply generous quantities of impasto oil paint to describe the forms of native plants and their flowers. My intention is to describe them in an expressive and unexpected way, emphasising the impression made by each brushstroke. For this reason, my paintings are highly textured, bearing sculptural elements.

Native flowers can tell you some ancient stories. They can tell some tales. Their story is their own. It belongs to them. They don’t care what anyone thinks. They are magnificent for their effortless grace, their messy grandeur and their timeless shapes. And though they be small or large in stature, they are magnificent for their inherent dignity.