Artist Statement
Driving beside Lake Pukaki towards Mt Cook gave me hours of quiet contemplation. I must have stopped the car a dozen times to allow the sheer magnitude of this 180 degree scene implant in my memory forever. Superlatives spring to mind but barely do justice to the breathtaking beauty of clouds reflected in the still waters of the lake. I can still remember the sound of the sand crunching beneath my feet as I walked between the rock strewn tidelines.
As a visitor to the spectacular South Island of New Zealand I count myself lucky to have been there on this day.
About the Artist
For several years in my 20’s I enjoyed oil painting. Then in 1990 I went back to art working in watercolour, mixed media and acrylic.
I studied with Pamela Fairburn, a noted Sydney watercolourist and also with the late Arthur James, an artist of international repute in life drawing. For six years I studied portraiture both in oils and charcoal with renowned portrait artist Yve Close.
I also enjoyed life drawing and sculpture with Alan Somerville for four years. I have attended many workshops and tutorials with well known Australian & New Zealand artists including Bernhardine Mueller (master printmaker) and Patrick Carroll (multi-award winning Australian landscape artist) whose approach in both the physical and spiritual sense has influenced my use of acrylic and the way I “feel and see” the landscape. No matter how widely I travel the Australian landscape has my heart.
I exhibit at Humble House Gallery in Canberra; with the Woodford Bay Group of Artists; at the Royal Easter Show; previously through Judith Salmon of Salmon Galleries in North Sydney; at exhibitions held by Art Societies of which I am a member and other exhibitions in which I am invited to participate including the Hunters Hill Art Exhibition, Waterbrook Greenwich and Waterbrook Yowie Bay. I have been invited to both speak and do demonstrations for Art Societies and for years I was an invited judge for the Eve Vonwiller Youth Art Prize.
Commissioned works currently hang in private collections in Australia, the UK, USA and New Zealand.