Artist's statement: 'Maps of the Soul'

The inspiration for my painting springs from the Australian bushland.

I am a Conceptual Landscapist. I strive to explore and paint the ‘Soul’ of the Australian landscape. I transfer my memories and experiences of the bush onto canvas, drawn from my observation during walks through the trees. So my work is striking visually but also conceptual in nature ‑ many viewers find them confronting and uncomfortable. But my paintings should not be viewed as Landscapes. They are Maps.

They are maps of our land’s history, including the tragedy of the Aboriginal people in the face of the white invasion of their land. My painting seeks to emotively portray the land that still mourns for it’s people. Their memory, laughter, and death is imprinted on the landscape forever. I portray this past pain in order to heal our memories, and to accept the great importance of Aboriginal people living today. And I paint these memories of the earth, with my canvases of ‘reconciliation’ in order to heal this rift between cultures, so that we can move on, and become one people - Australians.

I ran wild through the bush all my childhood, growing up in the isolated rural area in East Gippsland, Victoria. My father, a life‑long gold fossicker and stockman in the Snowy Mountains, taught me to love the bush, its wild creatures, its wild moods, and especially its colours. It was also the scene of many Aboriginal massacres. The painting The Wattle weeping at Skull Creek is a commemoration of such a site. My father told me this tragic tale often.

Much later, living with the Miriwoong people in the north of Western Australia, I learned something of Aboriginal culture. In particular, I gradually became aware that the Aboriginal view of ‘country’ is very different to the Western perspective. They do not see the bush as an inert landscape, as we learn to view it.

For them, the land is an emotional and historical map, criss‑crossed with song‑lines. It is a ‘Map of the Soul’. The Miriwoong helped me to begin the search to find my own cultural maps. I feel that we still have so much to learn about this land, so that we can love it and treat it with respect. I also feel that we have much to learn from the Aboriginal culture.

The closest I have met in Western culture that approaches this feeling is the attitude of the Welsh hill‑farmers, with whom I stayed many times, to their sacred mountains and lakes. During my 15 years of living in Britain, I was very influenced by this Celtic culture that still lives on in part of Wales, Scotland and Cornwall, and Ireland. I discovered the Cornish painter Cecil Collins, a great 20th century British artist, and his depictions of the Soul in the British landscape. His inspired art teaching was passed on through his students, videos and books, but most importantly through his paintings. I painted a long series of women Angels as a tribute to his philosophy and as a way of absorbing European culture and painting. This was ultimately the beginning of a journey to understand the earth in different cultural and emotional terms to the standard Western landscape, where the painter and viewer stand separate to the landscape.

Other influences on my painting include William Ricketts, whose sculpture gardens grace the Dandenong Mountains near Melbourne. He was inspired by the Australian bush and his love of Aboriginal culture. He too sought the Soul that is to be found in the bush, which he referred to as ‘Wild‑Life’. Ricketts adopted a truly transcendental and conceptual approach to his art, when he stated that all aspects of the land ‑ not only the animals and plants but even clay and stone ‑ are all alive, they are all ‘Wild‑Life’. I am also thankful to William Robinson, the Queensland landscapist, for his wonderful depictions of the mountains and bush of the Gold Coast Hinterland in southern Queensland; where I now live. The astute viewer may also catch other influences that are perhaps subconscious for me - I am told there are echoes of William Blake and William Morris: perhaps my art is filled with Williams? Viewers are encouraged to gain what they can from these images.

The Paintings

My paintings are mostly either oil or watercolour.
The watercolours are produced mainly with a mixed media technique that uses a combination of various water-media, on fine quality (one hundred percent rag) acid-free watercolour paper, or gesso board. They incorporate the use of gouache, watercolour and acrylic paints and acrylic mediums. Each work is painted slowly over time. I apply the paint in many thin layers in the classical tradition in order to achieve the shimmering depth that exists so beautifully in the Australian bush. The watercolours are occasionally finished off with a layer of wax varnish, to protect the painting, and I bring out the colours by polishing the surface.
I also work in oil paint on canvas, again using classical methods, refined through my own experience. All paints used are of highest quality artist-grade to ensure a long life for the works.