My work is informed by my habitat—I see, breathe and hear the ocean from my front doorstep. I find wonder in the myriad of life forms in the rock pools that dot my nearby beach but I also draw inspiration from the surrounding bushland and escarpment that hugs the Illawarra Coast.  

As Vincent van Gogh stated: “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere.” 

A recent trip to Hill End, once a former gold digging site in country New South Wales, has inspired me to capture the movement, majesty and transient beauty of the Australian bush on canvas.

My work expresses the dynamic entanglement of flora and fauna, light and rock. The bush and gullies surrounding Hill End are adorned with scrappy gums and undergrowth amongst patches of pinkish rock. I was drawn to this area where unkempt gums usher visitors into nature’s olive green and grey canopy and patchy, pink canyons.

My current work celebrates this encounter in the tradition of en plein air, the joy and challenge of painting in the outdoors. In working through the ever-changing relationship between painting and place, I use my palate knife, loose brush marks and the scrapping back of paint to layer my work so that it reflects the ephemerality and complexity of the outdoors. The visual task involves searching the entire painting; examining how techniques and the complex meshing of shades of green, orange, red, blue and pinks combine to evoke a rhythmic encounter with nature.