Rusty has been painting in oils and other mediums for 40 odd years, starting out as a young child drawing cartoon caricatures and progressing as a teenager painting surreal fantasy using small tins of model aircraft paint. In his young adulthood he continued his enjoyment in drawing using ink, pencil and charcoal. In the late 70's he done several tattoo designs, mostly medieval dragoons but never got into tattooing as a career. (found it hard to apply the needles to the living canvas). He assisted a stain glass artist with designs which lead him into glass etching. In the 1980's his father introduced Rusty to artist oil paints and from then oil painting became his addiction.
The early 1990's found Rusty branching into painting on old tools and relics after meeting and befriending Colin Brown. From then on Rusty has painted on anything and everything , he says he doesn't paint on people because their resale value isn't very good.
For a decade Rusty travelled in an old International bus selling his work at markets, swap meets and festivals from the Tamworth Country Music Festival to the Barossa Valley vintage festival.
Today Rusty resides on Bribie island, still addicted, wetting a brush nearly everyday, but going only to the local markets on Bribie Island where he continues to sell his bush style paintings on relics. He now loves to concentrate on his finer artworks and specialises in what he calls family heirloom work, capturing a families heritage and/or a subject relating to the clients history.