Avalon Beach Rockpool21 Ed. 1 of 20

Just after we were married in January 2022, Emma and I spent a few days at an airbnb in Avalon on Sydney's northern beaches. We visited the food truck that serves coffee and toasties from early morning every day high on the southern promontory. We found the breakfast fare and experience addictively meditative, looking out to sea and north along the beach.

On one of those occasions, strolling closer to the edge of the cliff face, we realised that if you looked straight down at some distance, you could see the beach rockpool. This was the beginning of my fascination with everything going on there, sometimes with bathers but on other days, particularly in winter, with no one around and just the elements at play.

Looking at snapshots on my phone, I work by eye to capture these moments using an Apple pencil, iPad and digital brushes; inspired by light and reflection, ocean water and ripples.

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Growing up in the inner-city suburbs of Sydney, I was good at art at school. But from my late teens on, I focused on other things; some creative, some the demands of career and lifestyle.
Half a century later, as my mother Pam predicted before we lost her in 2020, I’ve taken it up again with renewed passion.

Only a few years ago, there’s no way in the world I could have imagined myself drawing and painting again, and especially the way I do it now. The Apple Pencil and a big iPad changed all that (after a bit of a learning curve!). Sand and sea, water and skies, clouds, silhouettes and shadows call out to me, my brush and blank canvas. It’s like learning to see all over again.

My work is not photographic. I do not import photographs into or on to my canvas or manipulate photographs in any way. I paint and draw to a blank canvas, entirely by eye, looking at snapshots on my mobile phone as a guide. In a sense, it is flattering for my images to be sometimes mistaken for photographs, but I would prefer to have my work appreciated for what it is - digital painting, which should be valued for its skill of rendition, the same as any other artist working in natural media.

I have come to understand that the bigger my canvases are, the more obvious it is that they are paintings not photographs. It is wonderful that high resolution hand-painted digital images can be turned into large framed paintings - A1 or bigger in size.

To be honest, I’d love to get out there with a fold-up chair, easel, turps, sable hair brushes and wooden palettes (the messier the better!). But my lifestyle doesn’t allow it. If I see something, then - courtesy of my mobile phone’s camera - click, I have my subject. When I’m ready, it’s there.

For me, the main thing is feeling the pencil as it scores a line, or becomes an airbrush varying in thickness as I increase or reduce pressure; or watching and sensing how different brush shapes add, erase or smudge differently.

Yes the revelation is the sensation - the feel, the tactile joy of drawing and painting.