Artwork in this gallery is my own. All rights reserved, copyright.
Works shown are older pieces and include oil on canvas, oil on masonite, ink on cartridge and guoache on card. Current works in progress are better viewed at my instagram account.
My artwork is advocacy and based on research. I am a determined, enthusiastic advocate of great initiatives and education. Some topics just can’t be put in words, and with my academic bent I often could translate the same essay worth of thoughts into a pulsating, alive, vibrant painting. A great example of that is the piece ‘Boodjar is a Powerfield’ which encapsulates in one dyptich a story of evolution of understanding of some aboriginal lore about the land I grew up on in the Swan Valley.
I learned to draw and oil paint as a child and was well inspired, very early, by the extraordinarily evocative paintings by Latvian West Australian artist Gunter Parups. Gunter’s use of cadmium orange is one of my most visceral memories of paint. I recall the impasto texture under my young fingertips as a child gazing at that vibrant colour. So much of of work doesn’t feel complete until there is some orange in there.
I take great pleasure in harmony via aesthetics. Colour, light and texture. Art is a most platonic and immediate way to satisfy private expression. Architecture: secondary. Drawn out over months and years, more difficult and more collaborative, more service oriented.
A capacity to draw on this artistic aspect by way of architectural vocation is difficult to describe. I experience a vision of a real space in response to a need. Using what I have learned training to be an architect, I translate this right brain experience using left brain processes of logic and conversion into conventional drawings of different types. Clients benefit from the rapid transfer of idea to drawing because it makes for the product they are really seeking: the drawings which will get their building happening. I’m always grateful for my clients’ willingness to understand a lot of charades and messy scribbles. I meet with my clients a lot and get to know them well. We walk through areas, I use my hands and talk with a lot of descriptive imagery. And of course when we are together I demonstrate views by way of drawing; those sorts of scribbles are very conversational.
Most rewarding is walking through later in the process as built form is coming together. I get immense pleasure recognising manifest the space that I had already experienced within, earlier. Belonging and gratitude. I am graced to experience walking the art of my consciousness. I am blessed to do this as work and vocation.