Wave 4 Ed. 1 of 20

For my wife Emma and I, one of our favourite weekend jaunts is to drive to Avalon beach, up on the southern promontory, where you can park facing the ocean. From this high vantage point, you look down on the beach and across to the even higher, mountainous outcrop which occupies the northern end. The southern end, however, offers benefits.

It is a ‘meeting place’ popular with locals, surfies, fieries and the local constabulary, with its ‘Classic Coffee’ van. At the open flap of the van, you can get a great take-away coffee and the best ham and cheese toastie in Sydney. Or if you’d prefer a burrito, you can get a pesto egg, nacho bean, vegan bean, bacon egg chorizo or my favourite, the mexican chicken.

We discovered this ’scene’ in the days after our wedding at Manly, when we had a few days at Avalon to chill out, not our official honeymoon, just a preliminary holiday after the big event.

So this painting is of a wave observed at a distance through the tall grass along the cliff edge at the southern end of Avalon beach, with the morning sun flashing through the fluffy foam tips coming into view before she breaks. The different hues and patterns around the swell are remarkable. Combined with coffee, toasties and burritos and the exhilarating breeze off the ocean, this certainly captures the moment for me.

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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.