Painting

I came to art following 35 years working in offices, mainly doing editorial work including desktop publishing but also including a stint freelancing as a journalist. You can see my full CV on LinkedIn. I wanted to do art when I was a teenager but had a choice at school between studying French or art because of the timetable. Dad didn’t let me drop French so I went to uni, got a degree, started working, made a family and relocated to Japan for my career. 

Once back home I completed a second degree in journalism. I made some combines in 2008 when I was still an office worker, but this was short-lived due to work commitments. In April 2022 I started making paramontages and established the Eastern Suburbs Art Group's (Esag). I’m interested in how reality’s constructed through stories under power of commercial prerogatives. Now that I am doing what I always wanted to do it seems to me that the majority of my life was spent in a kind of prison.

I began to make paintings in late October 2022 as part of Esag's roster of events. I'd gone around Sydney in my hybrid SUV picking up magazines intending to allow people to make collage and this is what we did, it was fun (I had report) and I was so pleased with the results that I decided to do more on my own.

For a couple of months I painted then got stale and took a break over the new year, restarting in January. In the first week of February 2023 someone I met on the street randomly bought one of my paintings and in March I swapped some with a painter who had been instrumental in my emergence into art. Rozee Cutrone had asked me point-blank why I couldn't paint (this was in March 2022) when we'd met at a film festival and we'd talked. I am grateful for her assistance. The funny thing is that our handwriting is almost identical!

I began to use advertising slogans in my work early on and then in March 2023 started a series of abstract works after buying a book on abstract painters. All of this waited to hit a head in April 2023 when Simon, who'd started Esag with me in July 2022, began to organise an art show with four of us. A signal event a discussion Simon and I had on 29 April 2023 to plan a show at Darlinghurst's Art Centre of Sydney, the title of the show to be 'Colour as a Plot Device'. We did hold a show but at Laerk Space in Newtown, then I had 'Media of mass psychology', my first solo show, in November at the same location.

'FOCARE II', 2023 (watercolour and collage on paper)

'Social animals III', 2023 (mixed media)

'Mardi Gras 09 III', 2024 (photographic print)

I came back to combines at the end of '23 and over the period of a week or so made dozens of new works, some of which I took to the print shop in January in preparation for the show 'Gold 4WD' to be held in Goulburn in March (see blog for more information).

December 2023 highlights

• Stall at Hopsters Taproom Christmas Edition, Enmore
• Successful entry, Art On Loop show (March 2024 at The Holy Art Gallery, New York)
• Works in Tiliqua Tiliqua's Xmas Small Works show
• Listing of works on Bluethumb and on Arte Laguna
• Accepted to show solo 'Dark Alphabet' at Tiliqua Tiliqua to be in early February
• Accepted for solo show 'Gold 4WD' at Gallery 59 in Goulburn in March
• Accepted to 'Dreams & Nightmares' group show (12-17 Jan '24) at Boomer Gallery, London
• Applied for prizes via Arte Laguna, also Glover Prize, Burwood Art Prize
• Accepted for feature story and blogpost by Artistcloseup magazine.

2024 highlights

• 2 paramontages accepted in group show 'Under the rainbow, together,' Feb-Mar
• Applied for Soho Gallery Prize
• Accepted to 'The Dark Side' group show (9-14 Feb '24) at Boomer Gallery, London
• Started new project 'The Yellow Bin' with blog 'Leontography', January
• Launched 'Gold 4WD' blog for March show in Goulburn