Out On The Rocks

Layered

Timbertop Skies

Tumbling Into The Sea

Headlands

Last One on Quarry Beach

Cliff House

Rock Garden

Mountain Falls

Summit Pinks

Mountainside Study

Bluff

Cool Waters

All in a Row

MInd The Gap

As Far As I Could See

Shelter

RESILIENCE
A love of the outdoors instilled in me by my parents set me on a path of landscape painting, capturing the many moods and forms within the Australian bush. 

I remember visiting the National Gallery of Victoria when I was 17 on one of my regular visits during school holidays and there was an exhibition of contemporary drawing. In that show, I kept coming back to a charcoal drawing of a rock. It was strongly drawn, with subtle tonal rendering contrasting with stark black marks made by a determined hand. I loved the softness and delicacy, combined with the pure strength embodied in this drawing. It has had a lasting impact on me.

On looking back through my painting journals, a common thread started to emerge and dominate the imagery. I noticed that rocks were a recurring element and that they were the anchors of the paintings. 

When I've been out walking in the bush, I've taken hundreds of photos of rocks whenever I saw them nestled among vegetation or jutting defiantly out from an escarpment. I love the forms, curves, angles, folds, shards, layers, grit, colour, sediment, robustness, solidity, and strength of rocks. I admire their ability to weather the storms and withstand the vagaries of time and a challenging climate, and then finally nestle and adjust to their resting place. 

The rocks, geology, and timelessness of our land, its presence and resilience, its wonder; its witness to so much beyond each of us. This exhibition is a reflection of the rocks from the mountains to the sea.

Never did I think that the title of this exhibition would come to mean so much to me, particularly as my father recently passed away during the creation of some of these pieces.

Resilience is what we need in an ever-changing world.