White Horses

Listening to Jazz while thumping a paintbrush of titanium white against a stretched canvas drum has created this painting called, “White Horses”. It was inspired by a storm surge off the Narrabeen coastline in June 2016. It was the same storm inspiring my illustrated project entitled “Water Storm”. White Horses continues the story by depicting five streams of water. A final sixth strand is hidden and symbolises the observer’s own imagination.

Streams one and two, at the front, has a calm and peaceful surf closest to the spectator. The water dances and percolates forward in strand two, while the water curls, twists, and froths around seaweed in strand one.

Moving across the frame a wall of swollen water builds horizontally behind the first two strands. Strand three is getting ready to invade the front of the painting and replenish the seaweed with fresh froth and bubble.

Watercourses four and five release vast amounts of force. Stream five sends plumes of white mist up against the blue sky and produces a main of green white water plunging down to four. Strand four rises to compete against the plumes of mist by using the suns shadows. The shadows produce prancing white horses, with long white and silver-grey manes.

The five streams collaborate to tell a story of the powerful forces of nature revealed in the sea storm. In harmony the five streams spark the viewers senses, and the observer creates a sixth strand from the painting, by using their unique and creative imagination.

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I have taken the long road to discover that painting and photography can sit side by side, for me painting is my first meaningful creative outlet. I use my photography to inspire my artwork and I hope my love of composition, subject and light come through in my artwork.

I was born in Papua New Guinea and lived on a remote rubber plantation before moving to Sydney in 1971 at the age of 7. I was finding it hard adjusting to the city and my mother encouraged me to take up oil painting.

Having won an art competition when I was 10, the judges recommended that I study at the local TAFE on a Saturday morning. I completed one term but felt out of place with students who were all over 16 years old, so I did not continue. (I was also a TV junkie, we had no TV in Papua, and staying at TAFE meant missing out on Hey Hey It’s Saturday.)

It took me 40 years to rediscover painting.

The one constant in my work is to find a new project and during my break from painting I have been a project manager in Information Technology. This kept me in a world with projects, and here too I learnt that even the smallest piece of data contributes its meaning towards each information system. The other constant motivating me in life is to finish a project so I can start a new one.

My creative drive comes from knowing that each brush stroke I make contributes its meaning towards the completed work. What inspires me about art is how the smallest brush strokes, when added together, can radiate a meaning for the person who gazes at the painting far beyond the meaning of each brush stroke.

I aim to do my best in each project and try to avoid, at all cost, the haunting feeling I get when I leave a project unresolved. Even to this day I still think of my unfinished painting of a sailing boat peeping out behind photographic developing chemicals back in 1979. I was 15 then and my easel had been replaced by a camera and darkroom. A part of me still needed to finish the oil painting, but photography filled the void, so the unfinished artwork was thrown away in a frenzied darkroom clean out before my HSC exams.