Artist Statement

I was born in January 1956 and have been quietly dismantling things, both literally and figuratively, ever since. As a child I took toys apart to see what made them tick; the world felt like a puzzle with a few pieces missing, and making art is my way of feeling for the edges.

My mother was a dressmaker with a precise eye and quiet flair; my father dabbled in photography and car mechanics. Somewhere between bobbins and a Box Brownie I began drawing, painting, and seeing the world in frames and fragments. I remember learning that the world is a sphere and, for a brief time, wondering why Australians did not get wet; I also assumed there would be a day when I would know everything. It soon became abundantly clear that day was not coming.

School was less enlightening; illness and bullying taught me how to disappear. I left school at 15 with no qualifications, naïve but ambitious. My mother took me to the local college of art and design, and I was lucky enough to be enrolled on the basis of a collection of my paintings and drawings; something I doubt would happen today. My time at college was cut short by a family move, and again I left without gaining a qualification.

Fast-forward, and I have spent forty years in graphic design, art direction, and marketing. It taught me the mechanics of persuasion and how to stay nimble as the world slid from paste-up to pixels. Photoshop, Illustrator, QuarkXPress, and InDesign became part of my toolbox.

Now retired from the commercial world, I return to painting, photography, and drawing; to chasing ideas that refuse deadlines. A walk becomes a photo, becomes a sketch, becomes a painting, becomes a scan, becomes something else entirely. I follow the thread without insisting on a destination. When a point of view goes mainstream, I tend to start questioning its validity; I keep looking for a new perspective that might offer fresh insight, if not answers.

I like art that unlocks hidden rooms; a sentence, a photograph, or a scientific footnote can tilt the floor and show a new angle on nature or people. I admire artists who dug their own furrows: Bosch, Degas, Mondrian, Paul Klee, Georgia O’Keeffe, Damien Hirst, Tracey Emin, James Turrell. I am fascinated, and mildly disturbed, by the democratising chaos of technology and social media; AI is simply the latest bit of tech I am embracing, a useful, empowering tool, though where this great democratisation of everything will lead remains unclear.

Though I may be classed as an emerging artist, I am emerging with nearly seven decades behind me; time is not exactly on my side, then again, I could have a couple of decades ahead of me. I do not want to leave behind a hard drive full of digital work, a pile of canvases, and boxes of photographic prints for my children to quietly panic over; I have even considered a bonfire, just to spare them the posthumous admin (which might in itself be an act of art). Recognition would be nice; a few sales would not hurt. Most days, success looks like getting something honest out of my head and into the world without losing the thread, or finding some other distraction. 

I am not sure where this path leads; in the words often attributed to Hippocrates, ‘first, do no harm’; be fair and kind on the journey.