Gouache on paper studies from time spent in Malta 2018.
The built environment. A very small and ancient land.
Malta can give one sensory overload. The congestion, the noise, the building, the dust and the garbage smell. The ancient is cheek by jowl with the new. Even in the tracts of open land there is not a rock that hasn’t been touched by human hand. It is a beautiful madness.
Oils on board
In the sky paintings the gaze shifts, the horizon is lowered and disappears as the eye line is raised upward, heavenward, whilst still keeping the viewer on terra firma. The tips of the trees, the powerlines and the lights remind one that it is an earthly world and a mortal eye that looks and sees.
Oils on board or galvanised tin
The visceral closeness to the life cycle and more specifically, our experience of time and death can be seen in rural Australia in a way that is largely absent in the urban world. The images of tagged, vulnerable livestock are an allegory and a similar reminder of their and our fate.
A series of gouache on paper that explores the pecking order and obsessions of the shadowy chook world.
Oils on linen
This is a series of open doorways with dark interiors; a concealing, portentous darkness.
Charcoal and pastel on paper
Icarus, the metaphorical story of the folly of youth.
Oils on paper
Childhood is not all rosey.
Recently I have found myself beguiled by the world of people and their dogs, more particularly the world of dog shows. Show dogs, groomed and sleek, shining, muscular, pimped and oblivious. Their innocence prevails, free of guile or cunning as they are drawn into human machinations and ambition.
The viewpoint of all the images is at dog-eye-level, people are present but mainly as legs and bottoms and restraints. A view of humanity from a dog’s perspective.
