Oil on canvas, stretched and ready to hang.

Signed on the front.

There is something meditative and calming about painting a still life. Observing the changing light as morning turns to afternoon and evening, and noticing the different associations I have with each object.  I've always liked "scenes within scenes", and quirky things that connect to other works and themes.  Its pretty obvious I'm a dog person, and so they appear in many different forms in nearly all of my work. In this painting, there are two - there's the little coyote carved wood figure that I bought in Santa Fe, and there's my own ceramic dogimal with wings which I made after my beloved red dog Wilbur died. There is the wooden box made for me by my brother, and a little astronomy book. The tartan jug is a made by potter friends in Scotland. The small painting is a landscape I painted way back in 2007 when I was at art school and there's a nice spooky story attached to it, which I shall briefly tell. I was on a week's residential art school retreat at Arthur Boyd's place down in Bundanoon. I set the first two days really struggling with what and how to paint, feeling very frustrated. In the end I decided I would just paint what was in front of me at four different times of day. By the end of the week to my surprise, I had completed four pleasing little paintings. On the last day I had time to go and spend in Arthur's library - such a immersive space stuffed with thousands of books on art and other subjects. I took a punt and randomly pulled a book from the shelf. Imagine my surprise when it fell open at a page four little paintings of the same scene I had just completed, by the great man himself, titled "Four Times of Day". Spooky stuff!