I began painting seriously in1960 after attending the Victorian National Gallery Drawing School in 1947. I also continued my studies with Nick Heiderick (a Victorian gallery director, artist in potter). During my long career as a painter, I divided my interest in subject matter between landscapes and evocative figures. I tend to treat both fairly realistically with the main emphasis on mood and atmosphere. I read of those modernists that say the work should be flat to express true art, that three dimensional work on a two dimensional field is just trickery. Yet I cannot dismiss the whole sphere of atmosphere that surrounds me, it inspires the very emotions that will me to express myself. With the landscapes, whether real or surreal, I like to emphasise mood and atmosphere. Perhaps hint at a hidden presence in the bush watching you. My landscape work has used various art mediums including oil, acrylic and pastel. In my figurative paintings I tend to deal with people and explore the personal and introverted world, figures that express mood rather than reality thus giving the works a rather dreamlike and theatrical quality. A single figure dreaming, the emotional awareness between two people in a relationship, these images frozen in time, appeal to me. Over my career, I have had over 25 solo exhibitions of my artwork between 1962 and 2014. Exhibited New York Art Expo U.S.A 2013. My work is represented in many collections: SANYO Permanent Collection Tokyo-Japan The Shaw collection U S A.; Wangaratta Regional Art Gallery Victoria: Netherlands Dance Company Holland; State Bank Collection Victoria; Alice Springs Federal Casino N.T.; B.H.P South Australia; Griffith University Gold Coast, Qld; Trinity College Gold Coast, Qld.; Somerset College Gold Coast, Qld. I am now 88, and while I still like to paint, I consider myself to be retired from exhibiting in Commercial art galleries.
