Unfolding
Current Work
Exhibition Opening at Eagles Nest in Aireys Inlet on Feb.4th. 2023
The exhibition includes collages, sculptures and paintings.
I've been interested in the idea and beauty of “ the fold” for a very long time. It is a theme that recurs across all the interdisciplinary practices represented in this exhibition whether by the growth of vegetation or by fabric concealing or revealing the human body. In its form it signifies the trajectory of the past, present and future. It is travelling and redolent with possibilities.
I have taken as my references and point of departure the works of Botticelli and also the work of early 19th century dancer Loi Fuller whose inventive forms were captured on film. In her dance movements seemingly inexplicable graceful swirls of fabric were created by long sticks which Fuller held to extend the range of her arms. The resultant forms are beyond what the human body alone can achieve.
It’s not only these beautiful forms that interest me but also Fuller’s concept: the collusion between the artist and the spectator to find an explanation for the irrational.
Oil on Linen
152x90cm
Oil on Linen
152x90cm
Oil on Linen
152x90cm
Collage on Board
60x83cm
Collage on Board
60x93cm
Collage on Board
85x59cm
Collage on Board
68x68cm
Collage
48x48cm
Collage
48x48cm
Ceramic
40x16x13cm
Ceramic
28x27x15cm
Ceramic
26x20x10cm
Ceramic
23x20x20
Ceramic
30x13x12cm
Ceramic
33x16x16cm
Ceramic
19x23x23cm
Ceramic
33x14x13cm
Ceramic
12x18x7cm
Ceramic
16x20x15cm
Ceramic
33x15x20cm
Ceramic
18x10x15cm
Co-existence of Incongruence.
F Project Warrnambool. Opened June 29th 2022
Working back and forth across mediums happened naturally for me as a way to gather in and explore an idea between different dimensions. Collage and clay came late but are prominent in my process.
The exhibition at F Project in Warrnambool was ostensibly eclectic but united in one idea about human diversity or rather a question about how we alter our view of what is normal. The human heads and bodies are not necessarily gender specific although historical references to archetypal female imagery provide the viewer with an element of familiarity. I have been trying to explore how much incongruity the mind finds acceptable in order to take on new information and alter its perception of what it means to be human.
In the small sculptures, I have tried to balance the abstraction of anthropomorphic tree forms with mimetic clay heads, shoulders and sometimes feet and hands. In their entirety the visual language of all the sculptures, including the busts exhibit a disparity in colour, materiality and form, the white clay contrasting with the shellacked tree forms; clay against perspex. The collages comprise a variety of juxtaposed images taken from popular and disparate sources; comics, magazines, tissue box designs etc. I aim to marry the known with the unknown; the random with the familiar, in order to convince the viewer of the validity of the forms. Art historical references and mythological identities such as the figure of Flora, and the Greek Muses provide a stabilizing focus point and hopefully some element of aesthetic beauty.
Initially I wanted to reconcile the evident material disparities. At best I’ve aimed for a serendipitous co-existence of incongruence.
Collage and Drawing
70x70cm
Eucalypt and Clay on Tasmanian Oak
54x23x28cm
Eucalypt and Clay on English Oak.
25x57x25cm
Glazed Ceramic
36x38x24cm
Eucalypt and Clay on Tasmanian Oak.
56x56x28cm
Pencil Drawing
72x55cm
Glazed Clay and perspex on Tasmanian Oak.
30x23x23cm
Glazed Clay with Perspex on Tasmanian Oak
42x23x23cm
Glazed Clay
29x30x23cm
Painted Clay on Tasmanian Oak
30x23x23cm
Eucalypt and Clay on Tasmanian Oak
63x34x31cm
Drawing and Collage
72x55cm
Pencil Drawing
72x55cm
Pencil Drawing.
56x45cm
Pencil Drawing
56x45cm
Pencil Drawing
72x55cm
Pencil Drawing
72x55cm
Semblances :Eagles Nest Gallery, Aireys Inlet Opened 7th Nov 2020
The seed of this series of work began as I walked in the Otways, wheeling my new grandson in his all- terrain pusher down bumpy tracks in order to induce sleep. I started looking at tree limbs casually and then rather obsessively, viewing them as anthropomorphic forms . The next thing I knew I had purchased a little chain saw and set out to collect fallen branches that I could see had some little spark of humanness. Back in the studio this timber has been honed, carved, sanded and sellacked so that some semblance of a human body is implied and more than that, an emotional expression. Then came the clay.
The clay is airdried and despite its low status as an art material I found it perfect both for small scale work and to create the detail of the heads and additional body parts . I reasoned its sculptural longevity is no more an issue that many other fragile materials such as paper or fabric. The technique I eventually arrived at combines modelling, carving and sanding and then continual correction through the same process over again. I always seem to have the need to accommodate changes of mind and the inevitible wrong directions; a process that is flexible.
The matching of the clay head with the timber body began arbitrarily and with many wrong turns. Not to be too esoteric but I like to think of this as a space “where the random meets the determined” ; a situation where I can be presented with an idea on the edge of what I know. In the beginning, the disparities between colour and form were too great and it was only when I added a more gentle transition between the timber body and the clay head that I could sense the growth of a better aesthetic.
The visual language developed here is disparate in colour, materiality and form. It consists of abstracted timber forms that are imbued with anthropomorphism and realistic (recognisable) clay elements as face, neck and sometimes feet and hands. Initially I wanted to reconcile the disparities in a melding of forms that could express a different kind of normal. I believe I failed in that and had to do a rethink, adopting an idea that worked on a serendipitous co-existence of incongruence.
I am trying to explore how much incongruity is acceptible in order to alter our perception and bring about a renormitivization.
The abstracted drawings and paintings that followed these sculptures are proof, but only to me because I really can't speak for anyone else, that these forms are a representation of humanity. Over the last 3 years the sculptures have become so familiar to me that they seem to have personalities, vulnerabilities, even hubris and I'm fond of them.
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak
Eucalypt and Clay on Tasmanian Oak
66x46x30cm
Blackwood and clay on Tasmanian Oak 37.5cmx21cmx19cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak 36cmx25cmx32cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak 50cmx34.5cmx23.5cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak 47cmx34cmx26cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak 65cmx23.5cmx23.5cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak 59cmx30cmx28.5cm
Graphite on Saunders Paper 76cmx55cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 59cmx26cmx23.5cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 40.5cmx20.3cmx20.5cxm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 40.5cmx20.3cmx20.5cxm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 39cmx25cmx28cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 43cmx23cmx29cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 49cmx23cmx28cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 49cmx23cmx28cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 43cmx23cmx23cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 43cmx21cmx29cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian oak. 43cmx23.5cmx25cm
Eucalypt and clay on Tasmanian Oak. 72cmx23.5cmx23.5
Blackwood and clay on Tasmanian Oak. 49cmx25cmx28cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders paper. 56cmx76cm
Graphite on Arches 76cmx56cm
Spines
It’s not my intention to present the basket as an autobiographical emblem although it may appear so. It is rather less introspective and more a means to explore the nature of matter as time passes, the taut push and pull of atomic structures at once romanticised, exposed, explored and examined as “basket”'; as things fall apart and renew, deteriorate and re-join, unfold and unravel.
The meaning you attribute to these baskets is entirely your business. For me it is a means to move the pencil in a way that brings me joy, so that the tight little formations requiring intense concentration, their marks made sharp and small and hard give way to glorious unfurling and relief sometimes explosively releasing and sometimes surreptitiously slipping their moorings and becoming something else entirely.
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders 75cmx55cm
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Saunders 74cmx56
Graphite on Saunders 74cmx56
Graphite on Saunders 74cmx56
Graphite on Saunders 74cmx56
Graphite on Saunders 76cmx56cm
A chronicle of my baby’s blues. (Below)
Graphite on Canson paper 40cmx31cm
The small suite of drawings entitled A chronicle of my baby’s blues was made as I watched my daughter transform gradually into a mother. There is something poignant and extraordinary about a woman coming to terms with the fog of the post-natal hormonal blast, a desperate lack of sleep and the dawning realisation of a new dependent; seeing primordial instincts overtaken by a new and conscious awareness of love. I felt honoured to be a witness and record the passage of time and the transformation; my daughter and grandson almost oblivious of my presence.
The graphite drawings were completed mostly within the time it takes to feed a newborn baby. I drew mother and baby because I could. They were completely still and under gravity’s pull.
Graphite of Canson 40cmx31cm
Graphite on Canson paper 40cmx31cm
Graphite on Canson paper 40cmx31cm
Graphite on Canson paper 40cmx31cm
Graphite on Canson 40cmx31cm
Portraits
Lumograph Pencil on Saunders 76cmx57cm
I was the giant, great and still
That sits upon the willow-hill
And sees before him dale and plain
The pleasant land of counterpane.
R.L.Stevenson’s charming poem The World of Counterpane describes an imaginative world created by a recouperating child as she “lays a-bed”.
A beach outing with my beloved grand-daughter provided an opportunity for the invention of similar microscopic adventures in a mysterious, sandy terrain of hills and deep crevasses. As I finish smoothing the sand over her to secure her body buried underneath, she tries to free herself and the sand becomes a counterpane as it splits, crumbles and divides. Later under my own drawing hand possibilities for otherworldliness present themselves evoked by the nature of the marks and I am able to see a small portion of the world anew. As an artist that is all I can offer.
Lumograph Pencil on Saunders 76cmx57cm
Compressed Charcoal on Arches 70cmx49cm
Compressed Charcoal on Arches 70cmx49cm
Compressed Charcoal on Arches 80cmx120cm
Compressed Charcoal and Gouache on Aquarelle Arches 62cmx102cm
Rubbings (Below)
Lumograph pencil on cartridge over metal
These drawings are primarily an engagement with the materiality of paper and wax pencil using a rubbing method. Through repeated layering of objective marks and reducing the use of subjective and illustrative marks, I have attempted to raise a perception of form. I have consciously tested the minimal amount and type of information necessary, in the form of these different marks, to raise such consciousness.
Items of scrap metal I had hoarded over the years are pivotal to these drawings/rubbings: 18th century iron lacework, ornate sewing machine parts, door latches, medallions from old furniture and hinges are among the objects I used. In selecting some of these randomly, placing them under the cartridge and simply running a black, waxy pencil over the top, a method for producing uncontrived marks evolved. The materials were at times cumbersome and heavy, the paper quite large. These logistical problems often dictated the form.
The drawings ran in tandem with paintings I was doing at the time, based on the Noble Beast theme. Animals seemed to be at the forefront of my psyche and a formal “ animalness” seemed to flow naturally.
Graphite on Cartridge with Gouache 90cmx150cm
Graphite on Cartridge 92cmx144cm
Graphite on Cartridge 90cmc150cm
Some life drawings and paintings- an on-going practice. ( Below)
Graphite and Watercolour on Aquarelle Arches 77cmx57cm
Graphite and Watercolour on Aquarelle Arches 77cmx57cm
Graphite and Watercolour on Canson 77cmx57cm
Graphite and Watercolour on Canson 77cmx57cm
Watercolour and Graphite on Arches 77cmx57cm
Graphite and Watercolour on Canson 77cmx57cm
Graphite and Ink on Arches 84cmx57cm
Graphite on Cartridge 60cmx85cm
Compressed Charcoal on Lithography paper 84cmx59cm
Graphite on Cartridge 50cmx72cm
Graphite on Lana 56cmx37cm
Compressed Charcoal and Ink on Lana Paper 72cmx102cm
Graphite on Cartridge 84cmx57cm
Graphite on Cartridge 84cmx57cm
Exhibition: North and South
Eagles Nest Gallery Aireys Inlet
6 February - 29 March. 2021
The larger painted works in this exhibition, take as their subject the littoral edge of Kennett River beach on the Great Ocean Road, while the smaller studies were completed en plein air along the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley. My interest in form; the solidity of visible shape, pervades both the top end pictures and those reflecting the southern light. In retrospect the light and mood in the pictures create a contrast that is impactful. In my practice are the ideas I am thinking about at the time. These ideas might be about visual language itself and the materiality of the work; about light and mass, colour and form, line and texture; about seeing/thinking and feeling; about space/time or they might be about trying to understand the world as it unravels and renews. I am aware of the poignancy of the remote landscape and that it is a privilege to be there.
Implicit in the work is the notion that the eye roams at varying speeds; stopping to investigate detail, taking in a panorama, incorporating imaginings, often clouded by life's joys and sadnesses; referencing faded images from the past and those painted by much admired artists. I have tried to unify multiple viewpoints and perspectives, creating incongruous vistas. The discrete passages of time and space of the Kimberley and Kennett River land and seascape represent the nexus between the seen, the known, the felt and the undescribed world.
Soluble oil pastel on Arches 37cmx27cm
These small studies are works in progress. They were made en plein air during an amazing adventure camping down the Gibb river road in the Kimberley W.A. in 2019. The nature of this direct method leaves little room for verisimilitude and as such is a blessed relief for me. The heat and the flies and the practicalities of working with melting oilsticks makes for quick decisions and only leaves the simplicity of colour, line and form: the coloured mark, to carry the weight of the idea.
As a painter the immense beauty and breadth of the Kimberley is elusive. To be in the landscape is to be consciously surrounded, the atmosphere tangible and engaging every sense. As you move through the landscape the large broad shapes are forever altering, with their strong coloured shadows, the sky a constantly changing shape as the rocky outcrops advance and recede. Scrambling in and out of gorges there is a tendency to be constantly changing viewpoints, looking up and down the escarpments, as new shapes click into view, onward and upward like a Rubik’s cube.
The edge of the paper becomes an important consideration in creating an artifice of the colour and form that hopefully will inform in an authentic way.
Soluble oil pastel on Arches 37cmx27cm
Soluble Oils on Arches 27cmx37cm
Soluble Oils on Arches 37cmx27cm
Soluble oil pastel on Arches 27cmx37cm
Soluble Oils on Arches 37cmx27cm
Soluble oil pastels on Arches 48cmx55cm
Soluble oil pastel on Saunders paper 48cmx55cm
Graphite on Arches 37cmx 27cm
Graphite on Arches 27cmx 37cm
Oil on Linen 97cmx122cm
97cmx122cm
Oil on Linen 97cmx122cm
Oilstick on paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 42cmx60cm
Oilstick on Paper 42cmx62cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Exhibition entitled Otways and Beyond The Keepers Gallery Ocean Grove. 2018
“I've not thought seriously about exhibiting landscapes until quite recently. I see my little studies that take up space in my plan file as transitory; on their way to some larger work. I've been making them forever, in fact that's what I do when I travel somewhere. They are not so much a means to record the landscape but to carry the ideas I'm thinking about at the time. These ideas might be about visual language; about colour and form, line and texture; about seeing/thinking; about space/time or they might be about trying to understand the world as it unravels and renews. There is forever a “slippage” as time passes. Lately I've been noticing how gentle, little intimate entities can coexist with the violence of broken tension; disparate structures butting together and all hurtling towards chaos and then settling. These works here reflect that kind of thinking. More often than not the ideas are reflected not in the subject but in the making.”
Oilstick on oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 49cmx61cm
Oilstick on oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 49cmx61cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 49cmx61cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 49cmx61cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch Paper 48cmx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 48cmcx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Oilstick on Oilsketch paper 48cmx55cm
Kimberley
Oil on Board 93cmx95cm
The Littoral Edge: On Shore/Off Shore
Exhibited at Chapel off Chapel, Prahran 2001
Oil on Board 93cmx106cm
This series of work initially straddled the perceived divide between abstraction and figurative art. Earlier I had made some works that were poured and dripped and without an horizon. They were painted on the floor and were largely failures because the aesthetic quality was poor and in truth I had little to say. I did however learn a great deal about what a coloured mark can mean when it represents elements of landscape; near and far, varying viewpoints, the size, orientation and identity of objects in the landscape.
Persisting with the methodology I allowed myself another go, but this time exploring the clouded sky in all weathers and the position of the land as it meets the water. In the resulting paintings I have attempted to close that fictitious divide between abstraction and figuration.
Oil on Board 94cm63cm
Oil on Canvas 114cmx94cm
Oil on Canvas 114cmx94cm
Oil on Canvas 115cmx94cm
Oil on Linen 84cmx69cm
Water colour on Arches 35cmx50cm
Water colour on Arches 35cmx50cm
Graphite on Canson 76cmx19cm
Transcriptional studies of the numerous paintings and sculptures of Mary Magdalene have led to much of this work. I have used irony to present the possibility of a false history and a visual language of piecing together tiny fragments, that reveal and conceal, as a way to explain myth. This series of work was shown at Metropolis Gallery Geelong in 2017 . It was entitled False Histories.
Oil on Canvas 122cmx92cm
Oil on Canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on Linen 122cmx92cm
Oil on Linen 122cmx92cm
Oil on Linen 122cmx92cm
Oil on Canvas 122cmx92cm
Oil on Canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on Canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on Canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on canvas 40cmx30cm
Oil on canvas 40cmx30cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Fabriano 25cmx25cm
Compressed Charcoal on Arches 76cmx56cm
Graphite on Arches 35cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Fabriano 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 26cmx26cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Fabriano paper 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite and Coloured Pencil on Arches 26cmx26cm
Graphite an Arches 26cmx26cm
Graphite on Arches 25cmx25cm
Graphite on Arches 28cmx19cm
Graphite on Arches 28cmx19cm
Graphite on Arches 28cmx19cm
Graphite on Arches 28cmx18cm
Graphite on Arches 29cmx18cm
Graphite on Arches 29cmx19cm
Lumograph Pencil on Arches 25cmx25cm
Lumograph Pencil on Arches 25cmx25cm
Lumocolour Pencil on Arches 25cmx25cm
Lumograph Pencil on Arches 25cmx25cm
Collage Mixed Media
Collage Mixed Media
Collage Mixed Media
I was given a present of a couple of tiny, antique Chinese figurines. They were to me, inexplicably expressive; their diminutive size perhaps made them so; a passive quality definable as humility. Over the years my collection grew to include more human figurines, horses; some with riders. Like a child I began to make them into a tableau and draw them; to attempt to understand their mystery. They did not make cohesive groupings so the relationship that formed one to the other was always one of disparity and a dialectic. I liked their ambiguities both spatial and temporal. I manipulated perspectival incongruences and embraced the multifarious cultural references that presented themselves. For me the paintings ask the questions, how could that be, where are they, what could they be doing, why are the entities so different but the same?
These paintings and drawings were exhibited at Steps Gallery, Carlton in 2013 and some of them now reside at Yield Restaurant at Birregurra.
Oil on Linen 173cmx173cm
Oil on Linen 122cmx91cm
Oil on Linen 138cmx132cm
Oil on Linen 92cmx92cm
Oil on Linen 122cmx90cm
Oil on Linen 102cmx92cm
Oilstick on Arches 40cmx30cm
Oil on Linen 93cmx84cm
Oil on Canvas 71cmx71cm.
Oil on Linen 122cmx91cm
Oil on Linen 71 cm x76cm
Oil on Canvas 60cmx60cm
Oil on Canvas 70cmx70cm
Oil on Linen 70cmx70cm
Graphite on Arches
Oil on Canvas 122cmx91cm
Mixed Media 34cmx24cm
Mixed Media 34cmx24cm
Oil on Canvas 30cmx30cm
Oil on Canvas 30cmx30cm
Oil on Canvas 30cmx30cm
Graphite on Arches
Coloured Pencil on Arches 50cmx36cm
Coloured Pencil on Arches 120cmx96cm
Coloured Pencil on Arches 120cmx 95cm
2006-2015
This series of works explored the pivotal relationship between subject and theme and the fundamental conceptual potential of drawing. It is here expressed as a gradual change in subject matter from the structure of the unfurling rose to an examination of claustrophobic groupings of moving figures in multidimensional, space/time. The constancy of theme between Rose and Samurai paintings and drawings is simply a repetition of linear trajectories that express the moving form and just what that can mean.
The Priests of Nothingness were masterless and elderly Samurai called Ronin of whom it is said, sought atonement for their previously violent lives. After renouncing combat they practised the negation of their egos often wearing on their heads a woven basket that covered their faces. They roamed endlessly, begging; sometimes playing the haunting Japanese bamboo flute, called the Shakuhachi. Playing the Shakuhachi was a means of meditation, a Zen practice that persists today and is underpinned by the notion that by emptying the mind we find ourselves. The highest level of Shakuhachi playing is to find enlightenment through a single note. Moving towards an equivalent visual language structure of the idea of Zen, the seemingly mechanized movement of repeated, drawn trajectories through space creates a feeling, a state of mind, that for me denotes “nothingness”.
Some of these paintings and drawings were shown at Qdos, Lorne in 2007 and later, as the series evolved further, at RRRTAG, Cororooke in 2015
Graphite on Lana Paper 93cmx110
Graphite and Coloured Pencil on Paper 76cmx56cm
Coloured pencil and graphite on Lana Paper 80cmx60cm
Graphite and Coloured Pencil on Lana Paper 80cmx60cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 93cmx119cm
Coloured pencil and graphite on Lana paper, 40cmx30cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 93cmx119cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 93cmx110cm
Graphite and coloured Pencil on Lana Paper 74cmx87cm
Coloured Pencil and Graphite on Lana Paper 118cmx85cm
Coloured pencil and graphite on Lana paper 88cmx118cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 88cmx118cm
Graphite on Lana paper 74cmx87cm
Graphite on Paper 78cmx87cm
Graphite on Lana paper 73cmx56cm
Oil on Canvas 85cmx117cm
Oil on Canvas 124cmx114cm
Oil on Canvas 94cmx114cm
Oil on Board 61cmx61cm
Oil on Board 56cmx45cm
Oil on canvas 56cmx45cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 60cmx90cm
Oil on Board 122cmx92cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 19cmx19cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 19cmx19cm
Graphite on Lana Paper 19cmx19cm
Graphite on Fabriano Paper 19cmx19cm
Ostensibly these paintings and drawings are transcriptions of Deboute’s Roses. Pierre-Joseph Redoute’s watercolours and handcoloured engraving, many inspired by Empress Josephine’s garden at Malmaison chateau in Rueil in the 18th century, are carefully observed and documented. To me they are not only beautiful but transcend their age as emblems. I have used these images to explore the form of both real and imagined movement ; an unfurling of form, and to question through a self-conscious expression of visual language the regard we have for the flower to which we ascribe meaning.
These works and others were shown at Qdos, Lorne in 2007
Oil on Canvas 153cmx 122cm
Oil on Canvas 96cmx96cm
Oil on Linen 140cmx124cm
Oil on Board 90cmx91cm
Oil on Canvas 185cmx153cm
Oil on Canvas 90cmx91cm
Oil on Linen 140cmx140cm
Oil on Canvas 126cmx126cm
Oil on Board 90cmx91cm
Oil on Canvas 237cmx144cm
Graphite on Cartridge 100cmx 160cm
Coloured Pencil on Paper 90cmx70cm
Coloured Pencil on Lana Paper 90cmx70cm
Coloured pencil and Graphite on Lana paper 90cmx70cm
