Travelling East Africa in 2010‚ I rediscovered a love of drawing‚ completing some sketches of the Kenyan landscape‚ people and wildlife. I then gave most of my pencils and paper away to local children who had no school supplies and almost nothing to call their own.
In 2011 I entered the Blacktown Art Prize for the first time and was selected as a finalist for exhibition in western Sydney’s premier art prize‚ from over 500 entered works. I subsequently made a series of pencil drawings of the orphaned baby elephants at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi‚ showed these unframed works at the Brunswick Street Gallery in Melbourne where all three sold from exhibition. That same year I completed a pencil drawing of nine elephants from my Kenyan photographs entitled ‘Family’ with adults and juveniles from the Samburu and Masai Mara herds. ‘Family’ was selected for the Hunters Hill Art Prize 2012 and was sold at exhibition. A companion piece to that work featuring nine giraffes was selected at Hunters Hill again in 2013 and was also sold. I later completed a similar work on commission and was again selected as a finalist for exhibition in the Blacktown Art Prizes of 2012 and 2013 and the Hunters Hill Art Prize of 2016 and 2017.
I have since travelled to Vietnam the United Kingdom and France where I completed more than 50 small ink sketches of the cities‚ most of which were completed on location.
My travels inform and inspire me and gave rise to my first solo exhibition ‘The Watchful Traveller’ at the Brunswick Street Gallery in January 2015. Included were the London‚ Paris and Vietnam sketches as well as several of the city of Melbourne. Another exhibition at the Brunswick Street Gallery was held in April 2015 as part of the popular Works on Paper Exhibition which featured ink sketches of iconic Melbourne buildings, and a further exhibition of the Kenyan wildlife drawings was held in November 2015.
Though I have since turned my hand to fun styles of acrylic painting, I always return to my first inspiration - wildlife and conservation issues - and the rich colours and expressions of the beautiful animals and landscapes.