Still Life Hippo

To me, art is a way of representing the world as it is today. I would like in 50 year time, this art to be viewed and recognised as a painting from the 2010’s. In order to do this, I want to paint objects from this era. The hippo and the plant are both items I have at home and they sit well together due the diamonds on both of their surfaces. I was interested to paint these objects to show two very different surface areas and to capture how the light reflects off them differently. The subject matter also makes me smile, I captured the objects at eye level to enhance the character of both objects and I painted them on a very large canvas to emphasise the personality of these objects,

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I graduated from Lancaster University in 1992 with a degree in Visual art and London University in 1994 with a Graduate Diploma in art education. In 2002 I moved to Melbourne and joined The Beaumaris Art Group to continue my art practice in painting and teaching. In 2016 I joined Le studio in Mordialloc and have been painting and teaching from my studio here ever since. As well as exhibiting in various galleries, I have been selling my work nationally and internationally.

I am very interested in people and I love loving in a big city, so a lot of my work includes people. My work is mostly figurative, usually acrylic on canvas, and mainly set in urban landscapes. Most of my work begins with a sketch or photograph taken from life, a street scene in Melbourne, a train on a Japanese subway or an alleyway on a walk with my dog. I am constantly looking at people, buildings and trying to grab something ordinary or extra-ordinary that intrigues me. I let these images sit in my unconscious for a while to allow time to think about how I want paint that image, when I am ready to paint that image and how I would like it to ‘feel’. Light, colour and perspective are very important in my work, I subconsciously create windows and employ the use of one vanishing point to entice the viewer into the painting. My paintings are a merge of the narrative, figurative and imagination. While life goes on, I will never run out of subject matter to paint. The challenge is to paint a ‘better’ painting every single time.