I am a retired academic scientist whose research career involved the chemistry of pigments related to the iconic phthalocyanine class of artists’ colours. In my retirement, the hobby of oil painting has developed into a more serious endeavour, naturally with an emphasis on colours and their use to model shapes and depth, and evoke emotional responses in the viewer. My paintings range from detailed botanicals to urban and natural landscapes through to still lifes and conceptual abstracts , usually in a smoothly finished and fairly literal style. My personal tastes are very broad, from Dutch old masters to 20th century modernists: landscapes, portraits and abstracts.
Although I am largely self-taught, I completed two painting courses at the Brisbane Institute of Art. My wife Jan and I are dedicated art tourists, having explored visual art representing many centuries in major galleries and museums in London, Paris, Rome, Florence, Siena, New York, Lisbon, and other major centres, as well as in many smaller centres holding more specialised collections. Likewise, we frequently travel to attend major exhibitions in Australian galleries, and in the last couple of years, we visited Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth and many regional galleries.
Until recently, I was a member of Creative Samford Inc., Aspire Gallery Red Hill, Moreton Bay Arts Council and Samford Area Men’s Shed Art Group. I exhibited as an individual artist in the Samford and Surrounds Arts Trail and Open Studios 2017-2019. We moved permanently to Dalmeny on the Far South Coast of NSW in mid-2022, and I am now a member of Montague Arts and Crafts Society and Narooma School of Arts based in Narooma. I showed my work in my Open Studio in the 2025 Eurobodalla Shire River of Art.