Blog

Having recently had the visual aesthetic of my Distillation Series likened to that of Melbourne based Roar artists, I was prompted to explore their work and philosophy. I knew nothing about them, but was intrigued to discover that in the 1980's, a discontented group of Melbourne art school students were paving the way for a new scene. Feeling uninspired by the current aesthetic trends of the time and that the 'art system' was rigid and impossible to break into...

In July this year, Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne hosted their annual Fifty Squared Art Prize group exhibition. With over 800 entries this year, of amazing calibre and incredible diversity from talented, emerging and established artists from around the country, I felt privileged just to be 'hanging in there'.

The 2021 Noosa Open Studios team have been busy preparing deckchair frames and canvases for this fantastic initiative. I've been busy working on my canvas along with other local selected artists to paint an original artwork for collaborative display at this years event. This year, deckchairs will be making their way to the Swell Sculpture Festival on the Gold Coast to promote the Noosa Open Studios Event. Can't wait to see it all come together, watch this space!

This body of work evolved from a series of process-driven sketches on paper using a limited colour palette, creating a visual dialogue between positive and negative space within each piece. This series was intended as a brief exploratory journey, away from working on large canvas panels and on a more intimate scale through which I could move quickly capturing many ideas and compositional designs in a relatively short space of time.

In developing compositions for my ‘Departure Series’, a sense of gravity and solidity began to emerge, which prompted me to reflect on how historic exposure to British Brutalist architecture in the early 90’s has resurfaced to recently infuse this body of work. Brutalism emerged as an architectural movement in the 1950’s post war era, which was instantly recognisable for its solid concrete buildings with bold and unflinching facades, hulking forms and simple graphic lines

Looking back at a finished piece, I often peer at marks and overlays of colour and think, 'How did I do that?' or 'Why did I do that?.' A feeling of dissociation comes over me as I realise I don't remember making those marks or adding that glaze, or the sequence of actions that created that result. Where was my brain when I was doing all of that?