Research, serendipity, struggle, repeat – my painting is an enquiry into being human and being here on the earth. My quest involves risk taking and spontaneity as I labour to transcend the materiality of the oil paint and capture some magic along the way. I work the oil paint affectionately using brush, palette knife, rubber wedge and my hands. Sometimes I am less affectionate about the outcome but mostly the end result is a kind of painterly bricolage of mark making and revisions – referencing mysticism, myth, landscape, history, art and eschatological themes.

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Although my studio (located on Bunurong Country) is not that far from a city, in the local landscape there are visible traces of old worlds including limestone forests, fossils, and First Peoples’ shell middens. Representations of these material remnants often find a place in my paintings as do bodies of water, mountains and vessels, although not always occupying a predictable pictorial space. Simply interpreted: mountains for transcendence, water for a path, ancient artifacts as talismans, and a vessel for getting there. The painting process itself is midden like with many porous layers of paint revealing earlier layers.

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Many of the paintings in this exhibition – Painterland – while including elements of landscape and abstraction also have subtle figuration. Faces, structures, birds, other creatures and symbols appear and disappear subject to ambient light and the viewer’s perception.