After consolidating my painting practice with a BVA from Sydney University, my work has explored two important components in painting: gesture (the hand) versus geometric mark- making, interacting in a non-objective reductive style.

Contemplating the interplay of opposites involved a psychological connection, drawing in Jungian concepts and metaphysics.

Creating work through whole body movement is partly a reaction to the digital age of design and AI, and also a ‘muscle memory’ of my previous professional work in rehabilitation of the injured body in the hospital.

Sculptural ‘paintings’ using hand cut, thermoformed Perspex have been a way to deepen my personal problem-solving path of combining gesture ( body) and flat planes of colour (the industrial). My postured hand movement was permanently set in a single fold on the surface, and entered the realm of ‘expanded painting’.

Art, with the trace hand of the hand visibly implicated, is incredibly enticing to me.

Recently, a figuration has returned in my painting practice incorporating imagined landscape, human form, metaphysics and birds from the east coast of Australia. I rely on memory for this process.

My recent paintings expound on the technique of Automatism, made popular by the Surrealists, where unplanned forms evolve through both layering and intuitive decision making. Gradually, a narrative emerges and incorporates my interest in symbology, the subconscious, the trees and their birdlife.

I am aware of the recent evolving new consciousness of the need to connect with nature. Then we are able to commit to protecting our environment, an essential step in this new era of awareness of climate change.