City Hill

Canberra is famous for roundabouts. One of many such traffic calming devices is City Hill which now sits between the City Centre and Commonwealth Avenue, the road to Commonwealth Avenue Bridge which crosses Lake Burley Griffin. Anyone who has visited Canberra is likely to have passed this Hill and I've often admired the whimsical looking trees as I've whizzed passed in my car.
Reading in a local paper, about the rabbit plague currently occurring on City Hill, reminded me that it was about time I jumped on my bike, rode over and took some photos with the intention of finding inspiration for a painting.
I had only been there once previously as a teenager looking for a public space to hangout in. Judging from the empty wine cask and remnant 'Hard Solo' cans strewn around park benches 40 years later, teens are still using City Hill with the same illicit initiation as I had then.
It's a very odd place, difficult to get to or from without getting run over (as the rabbits have discovered). The trees look like they belong to another era and place. However, these conifers are well shaped if a little old and brittle. At the base of most trees are rabbit diggings and burrows. The surface of the ground is covered with layers of dried up droppings and yellowing stubble eaten down to the roots. It is dusty and rather uninviting. No wonder teens still go there, no one with a better option for outdoor entertainment would choose it as a location for anything. But at a distance, in the right light, it has a certain 'je ne sais quoi'. Which what I also hope this painting has.

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I am an artist who has run an e-bike business from home for the past 15 years while raising three children and loves most things about living in the “People’s Republic of O’connor” (Inner North, Canberra). I graduated with an MBA (Strategic Operations Management) from Charles Stuart University a long time ago and a BA in Visual Arts (Painting) from the Australian National University a very, very, long, long time ago.
There are a couple of underlying, reoccurring and interrelated themes that inform my art practice and bubble to the surface of my paintings (both implicitly or explicitly) from time to time.
The first of these themes is the idea of ‘desire lines’. In urban and transport planning ‘desire lines’ refer to the unofficial paths that collective feet make through the landscape over time. These well-trodden paths are both subversive, being illicit, and conversely, the path of least resistance. Desire Lines are paths that form themselves and are evidence of both humanity and the impact of humans in the environment.
Secondly, I use the landscape, and elements within the landscape, to explore what I’m thinking about ‘in the moment’. The moment (or muse) can include an emotion or idea, such as gratitude to a friend or joy in life’s journey.
Often, the inspiration for a painting, is a personal reaction to the zeitgeist and current bigger picture concerns.
A third related theme is an interest in, and love of exercise, and being outdoors.
Finally related to all of the above, it's impossible to paint landscapes, or places or people (in fact anything) without having some awareness in and reaction to climate change and our role in it, so as inferred above, this is also a frequently occurring theme throughout my paintings. I hope my paintings inspire others to actively explore the world around them, as well as their relationship to it.