Green Sea Turtle

This artwork showcases a watercolour style with a focus on capturing the delicate details and fluid nature of the medium. The overall style leans towards a blend of realism and expressive abstraction. The artist employs a wet-on-wet technique, allowing colours to blend and bleed into each other, creating soft edges and a sense of movement.

The brushwork is characterized by a balance of controlled strokes and loose splatters. The turtle is rendered with meticulous detail, with precise lines defining the patterns on its shell and the texture of its skin. This is contrasted with the background, which utilizes loose washes and splatters to suggest an environment.

The colour palette is dominated by warm earth tones, blues, and greens, which evoke a sense of the sea and the natural habitat of the turtle. The use of highlights and shadows gives the turtle a three-dimensional appearance, and the overall composition focuses on the turtle as the main subject.

The texture in the painting comes from the varying opacity of the watercolour, allowing the paper to show through in places, and from the subtle details in the brushstrokes. The surface treatment gives a fresh and airy feel to the artwork. The composition is balanced, with the turtle placed in a way that guides the viewer's eye through the artwork. The medium used is watercolour, evident from its characteristic transparency and fluidity.

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About Me!

I grew up in the small village of Perthville about 12 miles south of Bathurst, NSW, Australia. The first 11 years of my life were spent on a farm where I developed an affinity with the Australian bush.

I didn't start to seriously paint until high school where I studied art as an elective subject. At the completion of High school I entered the field of computing and have had many technical and managerial roles since that time. Needless to say, art took a back seat to life.

At the age of 45 I met a wonderful woman who I ended up marrying. Debbie-Lee revitalized my interest in drawing and painting, and encouraged me at every turn. She is my muse. I begun with some drawing classes where I developed my interest in charcoal as a medium. I also played with watercolor and acrylics, but it wasn't until I discovered oils, that I really found my comfort zone.

I like to think of myself as a bit of an eclectic artist. My day job gave me the luxury of not having to paint for the wider audience of consumers so I could try different subjects, styles, mediums etc. Depending on my mood at the time I alternated between portraiture, the human figure, still life, Birds & Animals and Australian landscapes. Sprinkled here and there are some frivolous works that I do occasionally just to break the monotony.

I am almost completely self-taught. In 1998, I completed a three-month figure drawing class at the Workshop Arts Center at Willoughby, Sydney, under the tutelage of Ros Deveaux. I also started but didn't finish an acrylics class at the same centre with Sarah Aylward. I also started but did not finish a ten-week introduction to oil painting at the Royal Art Society, North Sydney.

Other than that, I have just experimented with different mediums and techniques. I'm still learning (I will always be learning).

I now live at Forster on the NSW Mid North Coast.

I hope you enjoy what you see.

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Pete

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Exhibitions and Shows!​

2000 - Deerbrook Gallery, Humble TX, USA (solo)

2004 - Art House Gallery, Sydney, Australia (solo)

2012 - Beattie Street Gallery, Balmain, NSW, Australia

2013 - Lentil as Anything, Newtown, Australia (solo)

2017 - Carre De Artiste Gallery, Paris, France

2017 - Almost Naked & Nude, Hallidays Point, Australia

2019 - Gallery 109, Manly, NSW, Australia