A newly completed painting from my New Zealand ‘Estuary Series’. I seem to spend many hours sitting staring at the water’s edge, and absorbing the patterns left behind by the tides. Each day is different! I sketch and roughly paint what I see each visit, and these eventually inspire my acrylic and mixed media paintings.
Click HERE to view details of this painting.
Now that I’m living in New Zealand, I have a whole world of different inspiration to paint. My initial fascination has been the local estauries and their tidal patterns. Having spent 15 years in the Mediterranean, the tidal movement of the oceans in the Tasman region are a fascination and total mystery to me. Each moment I spend sitting at the edge of the bay opens up a whole new watery landscape to sketch, and paint and lose myself in. These two paintings are the first in a series based on these estauries.
SOLD – I loved working on this painting as we spend the first full winter in Greece for many years. Lockdown has kept us close to home, but how lucky are we to have a gorgeous long beach right on the doorstep. I’ve wandered along it in many weathers, and the ocean is often ominous and crashing. This painting though, portrays it somewhere in between that and the usual glorious calm blue it usually is during summer.
BOTH SOLD – Hot off the press! These two 40 x 40cm boards were a deliberate change in colour palette and can be purchased as a diptych, although they are perfect just on their own! In this series, I’m delving into marks and shapes of what I imagine are under these vast oceans around us. The Mediterranean, which is right at my door, is probably a little more deceptive than the surf beaches of New Zealand and Australia which continuously churn up various types and shades of seaweeds, but nevertheless, there must still be some interesting stuff in it’s Hidden Depths!
This painting has had many iterations, but my desire was to convey blue water and islands, perhaps resting points, somewhere in the world.
When travelling recently in New Zealand, we visited the Wai-o-tapu (Maori for sacred waters) Geothermal area, just outside Rotorua. Within this was a geothermal pool called Artists Palette – well, what a perfect subject matter for abstract painting ideas! The colours were out of this world, and all created by the various gases bubbling in these pools. I took just a small section of colour as my inspiration for this one, and it is just one of my paintings based on this wonderful area.
June 2018
This painting is portraying, in simple form, the small Greek town in the Peloponnese, where I currently spend a good deal of each year. Koroni, like a lot of small coastal towns in Greece, has a lovely buzzing harbour, with whitewashed buildings spilling down from the surrounding hills.
The painting is in acrylic, and in a new technique for me, as I explore different ways of capturing more abstract landscapes.
Details of this painting can be found in Gallery – Greece.
Another small painting done whilst staying in Skiathos in July. The photo reference was taken in the neighbouring island of Skopelos. It’s so good to see these traditional fishing boats still have a place in a harbour full of yachts.
Details of this painting can be found in Gallery – Greece.
This was a thoroughly enjoyable exhibition, firstly because it was combined with my eldest son, James’ wonderful photography, and secondly because my paintings were in a totally different direction from what I usually paint. The Creative Space in Curl Curl, Sydney, is a large and beautifully presented exhibition space and we were able to use it not only to promote our paintings and photographs, but also to tell the story of the importance of saving our beautiful oceans and marine life.
For this exhibition, I had created a new series of paintings of Australian waves and abstract ocean patterns. This was a totally new direction for me – from the structural forms of European buildings (although usually wonky!) to the curves and exciting formation of waves and the ocean, not to mention a totally new colour palette.
