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It doesn't get much more fun than this! My recent 'Outside The Box' workshop at Noosa Arts & Crafts was a fantastic weekend jam packed with colour, experimentation and exploration. We painted, did some gelli printing and collaged our way through 2 days of exploring the notion of thinking and working outside the box - literally!

The 2023 Incognito Art Show is a not-for-profit, artists-supporting-artists initiative raising funds for artists with disabilities at Studio A and Little Orange Studio in Sydney. This year over 2000 works were donated by artist from across Australia. The Incognito Art Show isn’t an ordinary art sale. Every A5 sized artwork, regardless of artist, is sold for just $100.

This series brought together my liminal approach to art making with more formal considerations of colour and shape. After completing my Portal Series in early 2023 I spent several weeks re-investigating the work I'd made, through sketch and collage, creating a 'Wall of Curiosities', filled with mini paintings, drawings, collages and visual experiments.

How do I know when a painting is finished? I've got new paintings on the go at the moment and this week I felt like I was getting close to finishing one of them....... And that's when the artists' age-old dilemma comes into play. At what point do I stop and feel satisfied that this painting is 'done'?

I started this sketch thinking I'd have another go with violet and green - but as you'll see after much indecision I ended up making pink the dominant colour, hence the title. It took me a while to tune into this sketch and I had a little wrestle with details - too much too soon, so lots of covering up and some big collage pieces to the rescue! Some interesting new shapes and ideas did emerge by the end though which may carry forward into something bigger.

Check out a few of the ways I create surface and visual texture in my paintings. They're a couple of my go-to options when I'm treating larger areas of space, especially when I'm working with just paint - no collage. This is one of the studies I did for my 'Wall of Curiosities' where I was keen to explore bold and simple compositions - and that meant keeping the shapes interesting in some way!